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Webinar What does Travel & Tourism look like in 2021?
  • Ken Peterson, President - CX QuestionPro
  • James Sauter,
    Co-Founder
    Rove Marketing
Overview

While 2020 seemed to drag on for most of us, 2021 is just around the corner. As industries needed to evolve in 2020, the expectations for Customer Experience are also changing as we head into the new year.

One industry hit hardest by COVID-19 was travel and tourism. While we see some venues still restricting visitation, others have taken a calculated approach to welcoming back visitors. Listen to James Sauter, Co-founder of Rove Marketing, a data and technology company specialized in tourism, as he discusses the ways data has uncovered insights to shape tourism during the pandemic and into the future.

Takeaways
  • doneHow long it will take for travel to recover and how different it will look long term
  • doneThe impact of visitor expectations and the influence on the experience
  • doneHow TravelSat and Rove Marketing used research to help destinations see into the future
Presentation
Transcript

Speakers:
Ken Peterson, President, CX - QuestionPro
James Sauter, Co-Founder, Rove Marketing

Top questions & answers from this webinar
Q: How do you see post-vaccine air airline travel changing? Will travelers have to produce health cards to confirm that they've been vaccinated? How do you see that affecting the traveling experience?

Answer: James: I think it's going to come down to the consumer confidence. Some of those measures might be kind of government checkpoints, but those checkpoints add to consumer confidence. So it's all about what is required to get that consumer confidence back, where it needs to be, to get travel back with health checks, temperature checks and contact tracing. We did collect some data on whether or not people can be comfortable, leaving their personal information in case there was an outbreak and we could reach out to them. There's not a lot of comfort with that. But there are now just new technology around apps. You can download an app and it's all very anonymous. It's down to the device ID you can know whether or not you've been exposed to somebody that's been infected. It is just another step towards creating a kind of consumer confidence that's required to really bring back tourism.

Ken: Every country has their own security measures, but certainly within the US, we have the TSA. I suspect that there will be some sort of encoding, like we have pre-check. I suspect that there will be some integration with your certification of a vaccination to get cleared.

Q: Any idea when will small meetings return to the USA?

Answer: Ken: Many people are missing the in-person meetings, but I don't think there's going to be recovery in those face to face meetings, until you have a vaccine ultimately.

James:I feel very confident that the event side of the business is going to come back really strong. I think we all want to come together. All the tech and Zoom re going to actually put more emphasis on longer events and networking. Rather than being kind of a two day event, it might actually be a four day event and people are going to be okay with doing that because they know that they're not going to have an opportunity to do any either face to face meetings for a little while. So they might book more meetings and people will be more inclined to book those meetings.

Q: Work opportunities within the hospitality industry will be close to zero in the next two years, or should we be optimistic about this?

Answer: James: I would be very optimistic, especially around leisure. I was at a hotel for two nights over the weekend. It was at capacity. I was talking to a contact at the US travel Association. He said that the hotel industry is really well managed and they're they're introducing new technologies. So I'm really optimistic around hotels and hospitality.

Ken: I would agree with that. And I think the jobs are going to be a little different. I know there's going to be a demand for sanitation team that you've never had before. The businesses, as they tend to have to do in any circumstance, will adapt. You'll probably end up with more employees, I would suspect, you're going to see costs built into your stay that reflect that. At the same time, you're going to know that you're going to have a good, safe, clean experience.