The 2020 pandemic and previous years’ overtourism issues showed us both the benefits, the relevance, and the limits of the tourism, hospitality and leisure industries for society. We cannot foresee the future, but we can listen to challenges and start developing solutions.
So far we have received more than 900 responses in which these questions have been discussed::
How should we IMAGINE tourism now that we have an opportunity to reset the way we do business?
Which CHANGES would you like to see? If any?
What are your CHALLENGES and CONCERNS?
What are your IDEAS and SOLUTIONS to make it through the pandemic AND into a sustainable and innovative future of tourism?
In the name of the global tourism family, many thanks to every single one of you for the inspiring feedback. Your replies are summarized in the sections below.
Don't forget to share YOUR insights (for the first time or again, with new observations):
The 10 quotes below are updated every few minutes and elephant word-clouds are recalculated regularly based on your new survey entries. You have to refresh the page or revisit us every so often to see the changed content.
EXPLOITATION
Lots of people lose their jobs do to this crisis. Employees have to get rid of a lot of job places because they need to safe money and the people who are still working for this company get less paid than before. Lots of employees in Austria exploited the "Kurzarbeit" because they got money from the government but the workers in this company still worked the same amount of hours than before, but they got less income. (October, 2020)
Student
Austria
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Different perspectives on the selected topic: ALL
Tourism business representative
Bosnia Herzegovina
Tourist
Singapore
Tourism business representative
Slovakia
#From Instagram
TOURISM MEANS
I can't describe tourism just with one word, for me its very complex and not all about a business sector. As I'm from Austria, I know that tourism is one of the biggest player in our country and we couldn't live this comfortable life without all the tourists that are visiting us during the year. But at the same time I'm a tourist as well, when I visit other countries or cities, so I can see both sites and think in a world like this we all know both sites and we barely think about the consequences we cause, by traveling this much and "fast". To cut a long story short, tourism means freedom to me but in the same way it can stress me out, as I'm living in Vienna with a lot of ignorance tourists all day long. (October, 2020)
Student
Austria
CHALLENGES
After COVID-19, we will face challenges in rebuilding trust within our markets that it will be safe to travel again. There might also come other travel trends that do not pay our region the attention. Companies will be economically weaker and might not be able to develop their service and competence, and we might loose the momentum we had where companies were eager to work with sustainability. Many companies might drop prices and stop caring about which clients they get, as long as they get clients. This can be challenging for the general quality level of tourism business in our region. Higher unemployment can lead to emigration from our region, with the result that it will be challenging for the local places to attract new people and for companies to find the right competence. There might be less willingness to contribute to development and marketing of tourism from the public government's side, as they might loose faith in tourism. (May, 2020)
Tourism or convention office, event organizer
Norway
CONCERNS
We are concerned that we will face a third wave of infections in the autumn, which could be much larger than the first two. (August, 2020)
Tourism employee
Slovenia
IDEAS
In March, the world stopped. After five months, we must not allow this to happen again. We need to learn to live with the virus. In the first wave, hospitals feared they would run out of beds - Why not turn a hotel that is not in an interesting tourist location and currently does not receive guests into a quarantine area for people infected with the covid virus? (September, 2020)
Tourism employee
Slovenia
I CAN OFFER
Relationships with Japanese art-tourism practitioners.
Networking to Japanese service researchers.
Collaborative (virtual/ real) place with industrial association people. (June, 2020)
Researcher, academic
Japan
I NEED
Stay in touch with other researchers, especially as we move out of this. (April, 2020)
Researcher, academic
Canada
SOLUTIONS
Building accommodation infrastructure for which the access is designed to be separate for each room, precisely to avoid the common closed spaces. (July, 2020)
Tourism business representative
Romania
EXPLOITATION
The media partly exploit the situation of the pandemic to get attention and generate sales. However, the media is not aware, or perhaps unfortunately they are - even sadder that this hype in the media - can make the population sick. (October, 2020)
Student
Austria
OTHER / SPOTTED
It is my opinion, that now we have time to prepare fresh trip ideas and new routes, for ourselves or for others, if we work in a travel agency and so when all this is over, we will be able to offer something new, innovative and different to tourists. (March, 2020)
