Are you COVID-19-ready?
We spoke to five big operators on the kind of measures they are taking to safeguard their employees and to ensure they are ready for a post-COVID landscape. While cost-cutting measures are inevitable at the moment, they are utilising the time well to be r
We are still figuring out changes to be made in our product offerings as the situation worsens every day. We don’t see travel resuming easily even once the lockdown is lifted.
We will review and restructure our products once we get some news. As of now, we are at a complete standstill. We have also initiated some cost-cutting measures.
Since we have multiple branch locations, we have been forced to suspend certain branch operations.
We are still not clear what will happen as things are changing every day. So, commenting on anything will be based only on assumptions. Every country is passing its own protocols for entry. For instance, Australia has barred any international visitor for next six months.
Fortunately, our business is 60% domestic tourists and we will continue to promote our domestic packages. However, the on-ground logistics, once travel restarts, remains to be seen.
We are looking at doing things differently once the lockdown ends.
For starters, we are ramping up our FIT product base as corporates may offer incentives by way of FIT holidays to start with for dealers/ distributors, keeping in mind the challenges associated with social distancing. At this point, we have not cut jobs, but are looking at the business continuity plan; we have revised salaries effective April
in order to keep all costs in check.
Travel is a psychological need and I am sure it will push people to travel eventually. On the product side, I believe passengers will travel to places that are not very far from their home towns.
Staycations will grow, with people wanting to stay at a good property and enjoy its amenities. This crisis has made us understand the art of work from home and I feel this will now be a part of our work culture.
Salary cuts are inevitable and understanding from the team is the need of the hour.
We foresee a paradigm shift in booking behaviour in the coming quarters and our teams are aggressively working towards enhancing our products attuned to these changed requirements in a post-COVID world.
We are also focusing on bringing our operating costs under acceptable levels. We are not only reducing variable costs, but also looking at optimising all our fixed costs, including outsourced costs.