From sanitizer bottles at every end of the room to cabin crew in shields, lock-downs to temperature checkers in every hand, Covid-19 has transformed the world of travel.
At the beginning of last year, traveling was not a dream, an adventure. But, as the year progressed and countries came to learn more about the dangers of the virus that caused the global catastrophic, it became clear that 2020 would be remembered as the year where the act of moving from one place to another would prove to be dangerous for the health and safety of people — an antithesis even. Amid closed borders and cancelled flights, travel came to a virtual standstill.
Today, as much of the world begins to emerge from lock-down and its confinements, an industry that accounts for about 12% of world GDP is looking towards the new normal. And travellers, many of whom have been largely restricted to their homes for months, are starting to dream again of travels to their loved ones, to beaches and mountains. Yet reopening travel presents its own challenges.
Now, people have started traveling again, slowly and cautiously. But how much of the travelling rules have changed, and just how cautious and careful have people become in the past year?
“The Covid-19 pandemic has brought significant challenges to the global travel industry,” says James Leing head of Trip.com. “However, it is encouraging that by now, we have seen stabilization or recovery of travel activities in many of the markets where we operate. In China, travel activities hit the bottom in February and have since been consistently on a recovery track.”
Trip.com Group recently conducted research with Google which showed that customers are booking on much shorter lead-times than previously: 80% of bookings in the new world are within a fortnight of departure, as opposed to 36 days before departure in pre-Covid-19 times. Asian travelers surveyed reported free cancellation and flexible bookings were the most important factors when booking travel nowadays. “There’s a lot of uncertainty around trips,” Sun says. “So people prefer to travel with a lot of flexibility.”
In the past, some events have affected the way we travel, and it's safe to say that some of the changes made are here to stay.
People are washing their hands regularly, wearing masks and are being cautiously clean and hygienic. Businesses are exploring new strategies, both to ensure easy bookings and to facilitate safe travel. Developments such as contactless check-in at hotels and airports, virtual tours of museums, and virtual experiences are not going to disappear.
“Even if the vaccine was implemented tomorrow, these changes will not all go away,” Hardy says. “There may be some relaxation in some areas, but some controls will remain in place because this is probably not the only time we’re going to have a pandemic moving forward. So, it’s a new normal.”
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