COVID-19 jolted industry and forced it to adapt
One year ago, the tourism, leisure and travel industry felt a blow to business unlike anything ever before experienced.
The shock, the jolt and the blast that coronavirus dealt to Central Florida’s tourism industry was the economic equivalent of a nuclear weapon. Airlines, hotels, car rentals, restaurants, retail and every type of leisure attraction — from the smallest indoor entertainment centers to the largest Disney park — all were rocked, socked and knocked to their knees.
Companies and operators were oblivious to the seriousness of the strange and unknown villain headed toward our tourism industry, and the havoc it would inflict locally and globally. COVID-19 paralyzed the industry in every way.
The mega tourism machine was brought to a grinding halt.
COVID-19 eclipses the combined impact of other recent crises — the housing and financial meltdown of 2007 and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The year 2020 saw the most catastrophic, disastrous impact on attendance, revenues and profits the tourism industry has ever seen in Central Florida, in the U.S. and across the globe.
Because of this calamity, tourism has been forced to undertake self-examinations at every level. While it’s hard to find a silver lining anywhere, COVID has forced us to adapt.
It made us undertake a “zero-based planning” approach and view the tourism industry from new perspectives, as if we were writing new business plans.
The process has been enlightening and instructive.
It has made us go back and remember who and what we were when our industry was founded, when the goal was to create fun ways to escape our everyday lives, and to serve families and large crowds in intimate and social settings.
We have also come to understand that we are not invincible, and we must periodically reevaluate our entertainment operating systems, programs and values. Most important, it has forced us to learn from this exasperating downturn, and chart new courses to avoid similar situations in the future.
COVID forced us to implement new protocols, including sanitizing, capacity guidelines, disinfecting and contactless encounters with employees.
Our industry has had to call numerous audibles in the last 12 months to stay afloat. Audibles that we never dreamed of prior to COVID.
Furloughs and job cuts have been the deepest in our history, remote workforces were established, season pass sales have been cancelled and marketing has been curtailed.
All of these adaptations, plus hundreds more stopgap measures, were absolutely necessary to stop hemorrhaging jobs, income and profit.
From airlines to on-ground leisure operators, controlling the amount of cash coming in and going out became the most important aspect of a company’s portfolio. It signaled to investors whether a company is self-sustaining or in need of more financing. While companies have always had to re-evaluate their cash flow during challenging times, the level of the tourism industry’s cash losses as a result of COVID has been staggering,
The good news is that companies rose to the occasion, making hard decisions to help control expenses. Companies furloughed staff, delayed or canceled capital spending, halted refurbishment plans, sought short-term financial assistance from banks or from the government and, in some cases, opted to close facilities during the peak operating season.
Measures taken to weather this storm have been severe, and some are still ongoing. Many were hard to undertake, but these exercises have made everyone better managers and planners.
A great deal of the new planning emanated directly from Central Florida properties. During Halloween 2020, because of COVID restrictions, parks such as Universal Studios had to be resourceful to maintain the guest interaction experience. My friends and colleagues in the Central Florida leisure and tourism industry say changes like those will be part of business playbook for decades.
The industry learned a lot about itself and its guests. We always knew they were loyal and liked our products. We know that more than 375 million people went to leisure properties pre-2020. Our leisure and tourism industry has always been resilient. We are the undisputed family form of entertainment that provides great price value. And some good news: We are already seeing planning for trips and vacations once again starting to occur as the vaccines get distributed.
We entertain hundreds of millions of people each year, through airlines, hotels, car rentals, restaurants, retail and attractions. This will not stop.
We have also learned how an unknown, unanticipated villain can almost instantly wreak havoc on our industry, locally and internationally. We have learned that we can be fragile, yet still loved globally by hundreds of millions of people.
The lessons learned will not be forgotten. It was a hard education, but we have learned from it.
(This guest column is one in a series marking the one-year anniversary of the emergence of the novel coronavirus and COVID-19 in Central Florida.)