First revive local tourism after Covid-19
OUR WORLD has been turned upside down by the coronavirus pandemic. This crisis calls for innovation, smart governance and government administration as we brace ourselves for the economic and social impact.
UN World Tourism Organisation secretary-general Zurab Pololikashvili said: “The worldwide coronavirus pandemic is a challenge we must face together... Our response must be calm, consistent and collective. Tourism will once again be there to help people and communities recover from this setback.”
His comments persuaded me to join the call for supporting the sector.
Local governments will be crucial over the coming weeks and months. Cities and communities need to deploy strategies to deal with the impact on health and address issues around social cohesion, economies and infrastructure. Working together has never been more important as community leaders driving development and creating sustainable communities that enable us to flourish, local government is well placed to rise to this challenge.
With an understanding of each local and district economic structure, the government can identify places where the economy can be restarted.
Due to its cross-cutting economic nature and deep social footprint, tourism is positioned to help society and affected communities return to growth and stability. For this to happen, local economic development and tourism enterprise support and recovery strategies need to be included in the wider recovery plans.
When there is no tourism activity, the pinch is felt at local level – in township restaurants, by roadside traders, by B&Bs and the tourist guide as well as the storyteller in the village.
We need to think of the measures to ensure tourism recovers where it happens – at a local level.
Local government will need to support new creativity and opportunities that will be created in the recovery stages. Local economic investment in tourism products will have to be changed to reflect new realities.
To rebuild local tourism economies, we will need to rethink methods, processes, governance structures, social impact initiatives and new technological applications, among other new ways of doing the business of tourism.
Local government will need to speed up measures to facilitate domestic travel by ensuring the safe and efficient movement of travellers, including an exchange of information, development of standards and new procedures meant to deter threats, reduce costs and safeguard the movement of travellers.
Our recovery techniques for local destinations will to need to fast-track digital applications for tourism-related services like revenue management, crisis management, rebranding and travel confidence recovery.
Once the worst is over, it would be the right thing to support the domestic tourism industry and explore our own country before heading to international destinations.
These things take time. Perhaps some of the planning and implementing can be done by government agencies working remotely from home?
In the meantime, let us stay put, let us stay home today and dream of travel tomorrow.