Whatever travel plans you had for 2020 have probably been cancelled, thanks to the global outbreak of coronavirus aka covid-19. We look at three tourism businesses affected by the shut down.
In January, most of us were making our plans for the year. Perhaps working out where we could sneak in a getaway, or perhaps planning a longer trip. For most tourism businesses, 2020 was shaping up to be a record breaking year… Despite the growth of flight shaming, bookings were up and traveller trends looked good.
The outbreak of coronavirus started much like the virus itself; a nagging sense that something important was developing, which has now gone full blown. As a result, we’re seeing airlines asking to be bailed out by their governments and dire warnings across the tourism industry.
We’ve spoken to several tourism focused business owners about how the coronavirus outbreak has affected them.
The Hotel
Home at Nine
Chiang Mai, Thailand
Over in Thailand, things were already getting off to a shaky start during January 2020. Ploy, the co-owner of Home at 9 was seeing the beginnings of the effects that we now know to be the coronavirus.
“A lot of our business is from Chinese tourists, and January is normally peak time. And then, getting to Chinese New Year, it normally gets busy for us. But over in China they were having this outbreak and stopping people travelling. We just thought, well,the bookings just aren’t coming in but it will blow over”, says Ploy.
As February progressed, it became clear that something big was happening and this was going to be a difficult situation.
“We tried for as long as possible to keep our staff working. We’ve got cleaning people, catering on-site and a coffee shop too. So, we were reluctant to let people go. But when those bookings started drying up, we had to start reducing overheads and unfortunately that means losing staff.”
With covid-19 impacting bookings, Home at 9 has been forced to focus mainly on their café for income. “We’re lucky that we have the cafe for food and drinks, which has been a source of some income, but even that has been affected.”
So, how are you planning for the future and keeping your head above water?
“At the moment, it’s not so bad and we can use the time to focus on some finishing touches from recent building works and look at our approach to groups, such as yoga, and eco-tourism. But, I think even if this blows over soon it’s going to be a big impact for us this year. Because we’re in a rural location, we’re hoping that we’ll bounce back a little stronger than those in the city. We’re also hoping to capitalise on that by focusing on our on-site garden and offering a destination for healthy and fresh food dining.”
The Tour Company
Visit London Taxi Tours
London, UK
In London, Cheryl from Visit London Taxi Tours was preparing her marketing for the coming year. London is always a tourism hot spot, but 2020 looked like it could be a big one, with the European Football Championships passing through the city as well as many other big events on the calendar.
“Our business is private sightseeing tours using London black cabs, which is popular with Americans, Chinese, Europeans, you name it…” says Cheryl. “We were already seeing a lot of bookings coming in around new year and into March 2020 even. But that all started to drop off pretty quickly.”
Although the UK was slow to put travel restrictions in place as the coronavirus outbreak became more apparent, the cancellation of flights from other parts of the world began to slow bookings early.
“When America stopped trans-Atlantic travel, that’s when we knew we had to start looking at what we could do.”
Cheryl employs a team of London taxi drivers, which means that they aren’t dependent on her company for income. But, even London cabbies were seeing the effects of the drop in tourist numbers thanks to coronavirus.
“We made a decision quite early on to re-purpose our drivers and our cabs to support the local health service…. Because of the nature of our business, the design of the taxis, (which are) wheelchair accessible and all taxi drivers are police checked as standard… means we can work with the most vulnerable people.”
Visit London Taxi Tours have been able to help move healthcare workers across London, as well as ferry supplies where needed. And, thanks to the design of the taxis, with glass separating the drivers from their passengers, it’s been relatively straightforward to minimise contact for the drivers.
How are Visit London Taxi Tours handling the disruption from the covid-19 pandemic, and what are the plans for the future?
“The plan is to tick over doing this work (and we are happy to do it) for as long as we can and then in the background do all those things we didn’t have time to do, or now need to do to be able to spring back into action when the landscape changes. I don’t see a quick global recovery but I do see us having a possible advantage going forward as we operate private tours and people still might feel a bit icky about mixing in large crowds.”
The Rental Service
Sailo
Miami/New York, USA
Offering boat rental services around the world, Sailo normally has a reliable year round business model. And although their base in the USA means that most of their business is from American travellers, the global trend for chartering a yacht for a week or a few days has helped Sailo expand quickly.
“It all started to happen for us around the time that the spring break market would normally be starting”, explains Gabriela, the Marketing Director of Sailo. “We often see big bookings around Florida and the Bahamas at this time of year, and global bookings normally in advance by several months. But the coronavirus shutdown hit us hard, and kinda suddenly too.”
Despite the growing panic in Asia and Europe, the USA was still partying into March. “It definitely wasn’t business as usual for us though… Many renters were looking for weekly boat charters to pack up and head to the Bahamas during lock down. Before Miami closed marinas and boat ramps and got into lock down, we did our best to find the best boats for our customers, however the availability for week-long charters from Miami quickly became scarce”, says Gabriela.
How did the sudden downturn affect your business?
“With the cancellation of many of our bookings until further notice, we are working close with all our partners to accommodate everybody as much as possible. As we don’t really hold stock, we’re in a fortunate position where we don’t have excessive overheads.”
And how are you handling the situation? What business plans do you have for Sailo once the coronavirus pandemic passes?
“For now we’re managing OK, and we have plenty of work to do with our marketing strategy and platform improvements, so that’s good. Obviously, the less time the shut down is in place the better, and I think we’re probably not going to be one of the worst hit parts of the tourism industry. In fact, getting away from it all is probably going to be high on people’s lists once we’re allowed to move again, and what better way than with a yacht charter?”
The Global Situation
When it comes to business, the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on tourism is going to be felt most by the support staff. Cleaners, suppliers, customer service agents and temporary or seasonal staff – in short the jobs that respond directly to demand. The World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) estimates that around 50 million tourism jobs could be lost as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, from airline pilots to souvenir sellers.
This impact is expected to have a knock on effect economically, so it’s not like the pandemic will end and everyone will fly off to Bali or Boracay the following month.
Despite the gloom though, the impact on nature and the levels of pollution at popular tourist locations are positive. Take for example the news of Venice and her canals clearing as a result of less tourist visitors. With less pollution and smog, people have noticed bird life returning to Wuhan, the Chinese city at the centre of the outbreak; and it’s hoped that some animal species might see some respite thanks to less human intervention.
In fact, as many people are pointing out, the covid-19 outbreak could be the global butt kicking from nature that we as a species have been waiting for. In fact, our global response has highlighted that mankind is capable of drastic changes if needed… And, it is needed more than ever.
2019 was a disasterous year environmentally, with despair inducing news of the Amazon deforestation, Australian bush fires, the impact of our many flights on global pollution and animals becoming extinct. So, in some ways, this global detox from mankind comes with benefits for the planet which we can only hope will continue beyond this outbreak.
Although the loss of tourism jobs on this scale is an undeniable tragedy, and millions of people will indeed face hardship in the coming months and years; we need to look to our strengths and find our resourcefulness and resilience that defines us as a species. The impact of coronavirus on tourism will be huge, but it will affect every industry and even our lifestyles for years to come.
Stay safe out there everyone!
