No meals the new normal?
It is disappointing that the industry has not received any direct support from the government, but I am hopeful that a united industry can overcome this challenge. I also wanted to look at the future, which is bright. Let us just work together,” he said.
SOPs for beach and pools
During the webinar, Khater informed that Ras Al Khaimah has also put in place SOPs for going to public beaches and accessing pool areas in hotels. “We wanted to maintain the same guidelines, which we have implemented within the hotel territory, to the public beaches as well in Ras Al Khaimah,” he said.
Future of students in aviation
Regarding students in the aviation sector, Hingorani feels that we have been pushed back by about two years in India. “That is purely my personal take. I strongly believe that aviation will come back with a bang by
“It is just a matter of time. As soon as the fear of COVID-19 goes away and people start travelling a little bit more normally, am sure that the F&B service will come back, even on long-haul flights. For example, on the Vande Bharat repatriation flights operational between India and the US, there is a pre-pack meal box being given. So, it is not that food is not there. It is just a matter of unavailability of a hot meal service at the moment, and beverages. We only have to wait until normalcy returns”
October-November this year. But, from a student's perspective who is talking of jobs in the industry, I think we have gone behind by two years, unfortunately. There is very little that we can do about it. We have to all work together towards it,” asserted Hingorani.
COVID-19 test before boarding a flight?
Hingorani feels that such norms will not be required for domestic travel since we already have a very stringent protocol in place by DGCA and various state governments. “Quarantine measures are already in place. For international travel, like the state governments, it will all depend on what other countries really want. When the borders actually open, let's assume in July, we will get to know. I believe that whichever country opens up will not have a standard protocol for - Kamal Hingorani
every nationality. It will be which country you are coming from and that is the basis of what protocol you will have to follow. For example, Singapore's Changi Airport already has a green lane in place for passengers going to China from other parts of the world where they are operating. So, they do not mix them with any other passenger. Every airport will have to design a protocol, depending on whether they are a transit airport, a hub airport, or an origin destination area basis where the passenger is coming from,” he said.
– Kamal Hingorani The ‘short-cation’ campaign
Khater shared that RAK has launched a ‘short-cation’ campaign. “It's a very new concept, where basically people tend to say staycation, but we are calling it a short-cation and with this, we want to make sure to leverage the length of stay of travellers and at the same time think about ADR. With this campaign, guests can - Mohamed Khater
stay for three nights at participating hotels and they will be able to get a destination activity and also get a weekly raffle and a grand raffle. Currently for domestic tourists, once international flights come to the UAE, we will be glad to welcome international tourists as well,” he said.
Robots in cabin crew?
According to Hingorani, the cabin crew in the aircraft currently is like a robot only. “Dressed in a white PPE suit from head to toe, not serving much to the flyers and only attending with water requests. They have become impersonal as far as possible because of the present condition and I do not really like it. So, I would not want ever in my lifetime to see robots on board because of the hospitality services. It is all about personal service and being hospitable to passengers,” he said.
How will AI change tourism?
In his closing remark, Khater said that in the whole industry,
– Guldeep Singh Sahni we need to focus on restarting business and going on the path of recovery; the government and the travel industry need to work together. “World organisations like WTTC, UNWTO and other are creating global protocols. Being a member of these associations, we have been able to shape a global travel policy, the priority focus area in which is tourism recovery. I would like to mention four main points here: we need to provide liquidity in the industry and protect jobs; we need to build confidence for the safety and security, starting from transportation, airport, airline, hotels, destination activities; we need to work on public and private collaboration for reopening and reassuring visitors and travellers coming to the destination; we need to look at reopening the borders responsibly because it is crucial to make sure we have a proper and responsible restart for the tourist, which
I feel very positive will happen soon. Artificial Intelligence will be part of the industry. This is something we cannot hide, but how strongly it will impact our industry and the business, it must be seen and will take some time. I think, we still need to work on our relation, our communication and our interaction in order to build the confidence and trust with the business, and then gradually see how Artificial Intelligence will help and support us,” he said.
In his closing remark, Hingorani agreed that we must build consumer confidence first. “The International Civil Aviation Organization
(ICAO) is taking the lead on this. Artificial Intelligence will be part of it. ICAO has formed a Council Aviation Recovery Taskforce (CART), which includes IATA and WHO and various stakeholders from the industry. It also has UNWTO and WTTC part of it, working together towards mitigating the risks of what we are facing and how we can have a very clear exit strategy very soon. We are already working on an exit strategy. So, we may be in the midst of a crisis, but what it needs and what I would like to emphasise is that there has to be a huge industry collaboration, a harmonised approach has to be there. IATA has talked about outcomebased measures towards risk mitigation, supported by scientific evidence, and that's where AI comes in and they are using AI already. Now, all this maybe temporary to handle this crisis, but all this will be very handy, god forbid, if there is another pandemic in the future so that we are better prepared. It is currently multi-layered bio-safety measures and things like that,” he said.
Sahni feels that Artificial Intelligence is going to be part of our life. “It is going to be used somewhere or the other in our lives, but certainly it is going to be there. As I said earlier, it is time now for partnering together. It is time to come together and partner for the future of the industry. One good thing that COVID-19 has done is that we all have started thinking together. Let us look at the future,” he said.