Tourism industry needs an overhaul
During the management of a crisis, one of the most crucial factors is how the uncertainty and fear of what the future holds is communicated to the public. The way we communicate our failures and shortcomings will either accelerate fear or restore hope.
I had the opportunity this week to participate in an extraordinary Middle East webinar hosted by the UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), involving 250 participants from around the world. What I learned from this meeting was alarming, but also, in some ways, heartening. On the one hand, it was clear that the travel and tourism industries have been one of the biggest casualties of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). I learned how critical these sectors are to national economies and to the global economy. A consensus has emerged indicating that it may take up to a year for the tourism industry to fully recover. However, many also recognize that a return to normality may not only take much longer than that, but may never be possible in a post-pandemic world. On the other hand, I also learned that there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Hearing the grim diagnosis did, admittedly, come as a shock — perhaps because I’m a Londoner. Last year, London was the mostvisited tourist destination in
Europe and the fifth most-popular worldwide. I cannot help but think that the way this city operates will fundamentally change because of the pandemic.
To some extent, we are seeing the impact already. While, in many ways, the pandemic has brought us together and sparked unprecedented levels of community solidarity, it has also ushered in fear; in particular, a fear of “the other.”
Tourism is usually a powerful bulwark against such generalized fears. When we travel, when we visit new countries and explore new cities, and when we meet and engage with new people, we are doing something extremely important. We are learning from one another and breaking down these barriers of fear. This is why tourism is vital for our societies — it helps us thrive and engage with new ideas and new ways of thinking.
So I was heartened to learn from the UNWTO meeting that pioneers across the sector are thinking far beyond recovery. Many expect that we cannot return to business as usual after this pandemic, so they are looking at ways to reinvent the tourism sector and to make it better. Many UNWTO participants are seeing that the way forward is not recovery, but transformation.
One of the most out-of-the-box ideas doing the rounds is a complete rethink of what the post-COVID-19 tourism infrastructure might look like. The industry is looking at harnessing technological innovations such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) to explore ways of digitalizing the sector. We are at the beginning of a new era for tourism. While getting to the other side will involve much pain and trauma, we have an unprecedented opportunity to create more sustainable, balanced and fulfilling forms of tourism that relieve the risks of another pandemic or ecological crisis. The task ahead is to start building the new tourism apace.
Muddassar Ahmed is the Managing Partner of Unitas Communications, a leading London-based reputation management consulting firm. Twitter: @MMuddassarAhmed
For full version, log on to www.arabnews.com/opinion