Tourism: Experts look forward to post-pandemic times ... again

A year ago, Central Florida theme-park fans were reeling from extended shutdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic. They were wrapping their heads around concepts such as mandatory face coverings, temperature screenings, reservation systems and limited capacities.

For an Orlando Sentinel story that published in April 2020, tourism watchers in were asked to predict changes coming in their fields. For the most part, what they anticipated did come to pass … although projected time frames often turned out to be optimistic.

This April, the Sentinel asked the same experts to dust off those crystal balls and to reflect on their comments from a year ago. Alas, last year’s headline — “Imagining theme parks in the post-pandemic world” — still works today.

At the gate

Reservations for theme-park attendance will stay awhile, predicts Curtis Parks, managing partner at Icon Experiences, an

attractions developer based in Maryland.

“It allows the operator to be able to right-size their daily operation to whatever the capacity limits are,” he said. “I don’t see that changing in the near term, especially for 2021 … 2022, maybe.”

Walt Disney World and SeaWorld Orlando have required date-specific reservations for their theme parks since reopening last summer. Universal Orlando has not.

Reservations could lead to more attractions adopting variable-pricing structures in which an admission ticket’s price depends on the day of the week or the season. That can benefit consumers, he said.

“I think they’re going to be able to really realize some nice savings in their travel costs and vacation costs because they’ll be able to look at the best periods to go,” Parks said.

Last year, Parks said “temperature checks are the new bag check,” and he thinks those scans and other health precautions will stick around, depending on local authorities.

A trend that he expected to surge but did not was going online to purchase tickets.

“I really thought more people would be online and not at the gates,” he said. “I just think some people are creatures of habit, and they don’t necessarily trust buying stuff online.”

Crowd pleasing

Spring attendance levels point to a busy Central Florida summer, said Brian Morrow, owner of B Morrow Productions, an Orlando-based design studio that works on theme-park, resort and museum projects.

Park reservations at Disney World have become more scarce, and Universal’s parks reached capacity multiple times leading into Easter.

“The demand over the next two months is going to far exceed the capacities,” he said.

Winding, spaced-out queues for rides and attractions strain park operations, he said.

“I think the next thing that happens is that the parks will keep masks on the guests, but they will reduce the distancing required” between groups, he said. Central Florida attractions have encouraged a 6-foot buffer of space between traveling parties since reopening last summer.

“What I’m seeing in the parks is that guests aren’t really adhering to it very strictly. If left to their own devices, they crowd up,” Morrow said. “It’s telling me that consumers don’t care. They’re either vaccinated or they’ve had it or are fatigued by it.”

Last year, it was thought that 3-D attractions with reusable viewers could fade, but that feeling subsided as more was learned about the coronavirus.

“The touch thing is less significant now than the breathing thing,” Morrow said. “I’m not nervous about it [3-D glasses]. I would have been before.”

Moving forward, he doesn’t see the pandemic as a factor in attraction designs. Some predicted COVID would be as big a factor as the Americans With Disabilities Act was in the 1990s, he said.

“We’re currently not seeing any owners permanently designing pandemic-level viruses into their base projects,” Morrow said. “Overall, we’re seeing full steam ahead … with caution and high levels of optimism from our clients.”

The meal deal

Mobile ordering from park restaurants existed before the pandemic, and it has become more prevalent since the reopenings. Generally, visitors use an app to select and pay for meals outside the eatery and then are alerted when the food is ready to pick up.

But that has created a new kind of lunch rush because the time slots are nabbed early, said AJ Wolfe, who runs the Disney Food Blog, a website independent from Walt Disney Co.

“I think there’s a lot of disappointed people when they’re trying to get food at 12 o’clock that that time slot is filled up,” she said. “They’re going to have to wait until 2 or 3 to get their food or they’re going to have to eat someplace else.”

There also can be congestion of people waiting for food outside the venue. “This kind of defeats the purpose,” Wolfe said. “I think mobile order’s great. … but there are definitely some things that need to be ironed out.”

Some park restaurants are operating under new formats or with different menu selections. A few socially distant character experiences have returned.

“Many of them are reopening … but you may or may not have the characters return. But you’re never going to go to a buffet at the moment,” Wolfe said. Many factors determine which eateries open.

“I honestly think what we see is the tip of the iceberg,” she said. “There are a lot of considerations that we don’t see. It could depend on the size of the restaurant kitchen, and how many people they have brought back to work from furlough. … I think that they’re doing the best they can for each individual restaurant.”

Many dining questions loom, she said. People are curious about the future of signature dining, plans for the Space 200 restaurant at Epcot and what’s up with Ohana, which has not reopened at Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort yet.

“Another big question out there is room service,” Wolfe said. “Room service has returned to some hotels, but not all of the deluxes have room service right now.”

Staying and staying well

Cleaning protocols at hotels will continue, but they might not be as obvious, said Jan Freitag, senior vice president of lodging insights for STR, a company that tracks analytics regarding the hospitality industry.

“With the increased number of vaccinations, people may not feel quite as worried about getting the virus,” he said.

“I am not sure that this whole idea of ‘Let’s leave a room two days empty in between stays’ is going to continue,” Freitag said.

“Housekeeping services while you’re staying for multinight stays are very likely to be continued to be curtailed. … And if you want new towels, you have to call for them.”

An early pandemic trend in hotel industry was offering rooms for nontraditional uses such as offices or meeting spaces.

“There were days in April, May, June of last year, when people were just trying very, very hard to come up with slightly different business models,” Freitag said. “But as the recovery is ongoing, hotel rooms will be used for hotel rooms. There’s little need to sell it as an office, for example.”

Hotel-industry recovery will happen in phases, he said, starting with leisure travelers and building to citywide meetings with tens of thousands of attendees.

“That’s going to take the longest just because you need to have a lot of people feeling comfortable,” Freitag said.

He will monitor pricing stances of reopened hotels and new ones, he said.

“The American economy is just restarting,” he said. “All of this could make for an interesting pricing scenario in the downtown areas where we might see a lot of new rooms competing for not that many travelers yet.”

Across the pond … and back?

A year ago, the people of Great Britain were ready for a Florida vacation. And that’s still true, said Susan Veness, author of “Brits’ Guide to Orlando” and “Walt Disney World Hacks.”

“They missed their last year of vacation; they expected to be able to be here,” she said. “They still want to come. It’s still a big priority.”

Folks with Orlando plans for this October feel optimistic, Veness said. Some travelers with spring and summer reservations pushed their plans back another year, she said.

The possibility of reduced entertainment in the parks — days without fireworks or parades and characters kept at a distance — won’t hurt, she thinks.

“It still feels like a worthwhile experience. And maybe I’m saying that as a Floridian. … well, I can go back any time,” Veness said. “But, yeah, it still has a degree of magic.”

Reports of packed hot spots in the state and other Florida-man-type headlines aren’t likely to deter visitors from England after travel restrictions go away, she said.

“I think Americans are probably more scared of Florida because they really understand Florida in a different way. [Brits] see it as sort of just as this magical place,” Veness said. “It’s all about fun and vacation.”