RAK’s action plan

We have reached out to our partners, stakeholders and business entities, and we have planned with them. We have spoken directly to industry partners, General Managers and owners. We have been doing regular weekly meetings with the Ministry of Economy to leverage a federal support to our sector. Secondly, we created a stimulus package and the highlights of this package was relief measures. We have waived off the tourist licensing fee and provided additional specialised support for the SMEs. We have also formed a steering committee and the main role for this committee is to provide a seamless facilitation of the whole tourism incentive package the airports, from everybody. People are saying that you cannot maintain adequate social distancing in an aircraft. WHO has certified that the air circulation in an aircraft flows from top to bottom, like a vertical curtain. The entire air in every aircraft gets recirculated every 2-3 minutes and because it moves like a curtain from top to bottom, it does not move backward or forward. Irrespective of where you are sitting, even if you have three passengers sitting adjacent to each other in Economy

– Mohamed Khater

travel. In fact, it has been proven that an aircraft, from a health perspective or from a contagion perspective, is far more sanitised than any other public transport today. We do not charge the customers anything for the safety kit because we actually want the customers to come back, gain that confidence and get more people to start flying. IATA projects that 2020 will have 47 per cent of 2019's revenue passenger kilometres which, in the current environment, should be a wonderful thing to talk about.”

Right time to restart business?

The way people travel will change and new strategies should be framed keeping in mind consumer confidence, is an opinion shared by many in the industry. “People will prefer nature tourism or wildlife tourism or maybe going to a resort to relax. Airports will be less crowded; it may be good news for many people, but travellers will avoid going to a train or bus stand. They will prefer to travel by themselves in their car. When more and more people get to know that air travel is the safest means of transport, they will travel more.

The hotels might get cheaper or they might come with better options since the market is going to be sluggish for some time. Even on overseas trips, people would like to choose a road trip. Lockdown has certainly slowed demand, but some people have already started looking at cycling vacations or activities like walking, sailing, hiking, fishing, etc. All these things are going to be in trend and a tour operator has to be ready with it. Airlines and hotels should start giving certain benefits to tour operators on postponements, cancel