With travel bans continuing and vaccinations appearing to be taking an eternity to cover the world, where does that leave travel and specifically the hospitality Industry?
The industry cannot stock up on inventory and sell it at a later date an empty hotel bed today has no value tomorrow an empty restaurant table today has no value tomorrow.
So they need to act fast to recover and get it right, they will only get one shot at this.
As a generalisation American tourists by the majority are very happy to spend their vacation time inside of the USA, which makes sense when you look at the diversity and beauty it offers, beaches, mountains countryside, Cities, nature it really does have it all and as a bonus without expensive flights to another country or continent.
I believe it’s fair to say the American hospitality Industry will be first to pick up and get closest to establishing the new norms.
Elsewhere the picture is very different, Europeans (particularly British) like to travel for vacations, almost saying the destination is more important than the experience.
Take British tourists, the biggest single demographic to travel to Spain annually, the prime reason Sunshine.
Spain does offer excellent high quality options, however you cannot say low cost Spanish tourism provides any kind of experience except a bad one, of course though it does provide sunshine, and at a relatively low cost.
So maybe it’s not only destination versus experience we need to factor budget into the equation.
Today though it would appear that possibly Covid and politics is going to change that, with each country introducing new restrictions of entry, maybe more Europeans will have to stay at home and holiday “American Style.”
I see this as a fantastic opportunity for every country to regenerate its national tourism, and promote staycations as the future focus, the challenge being if you have bad weather (UK) you need to assure people of great experiences and heres the rub, at an affordable price to make them want to spend 7-14 days in your Hotel, Lodge, Campsite, Chalet etc.
Tired waiters poor service low quality food and entertainment will no longer be accepted, people just won’t come back to it, now is the time to attract families together, spending time with our loved ones is not an everyday occurrence anymore, so this time becomes even more special, so again it’s up to the hospitality industry to stand up raise the bar and take these family holiday budgets, and give them a great value vacation for their hard earned bucks.
Facilities and locations are wonderful, but add bad service and they become irrelevant, add great service and amenity imitations disappear.
The key to attracting your national tourists and then keeping them is service, this is provided by people, by your employees and team members, they need to be engaged, they have the power to make or break a families vacation, that power is incredible.
So Industry employers take a look inside and answer this question.
What do you do to contribute to the engagement levels of your employees?
Do you allocate a budget column for development and coaching of your teams?
Or do you simply continue to pay them as little as possible without any employment benefits and expect them to behave as ambassadors for your self centred money driven organisations ?
At VOS we have created several programs to assist and increase staff engagement levels across all departments not just client facing, the increase in engagement and increased productivity is huge, and the finest benefit of all, your guests those families will enjoy their vacation, promote your product to friends and colleagues and best of all, they will come back.
It actually costs a lot less than you would think to re-engage your teams, especially when you compare that to the ever increasing cost of replacing them.
Drop us a line and we’ll happily tell you more.