COVID-19 and Tourism〜how will the industry be changed in the Post-COVID-19 Era?〜

There is no doubt that an unexpected pandemic brought devastating damages to almost all economic sectors. Even two years passed from the beginning of the disaster, some of the countries remain closed to the border and the number of travelers has not been back compared to before the pandemic. 

In various sectors, especially the tourism industry is facing a big challenge that was never experienced after the dissemination of mass tourism. It can be also said that now the industry is in a transformative opportunity (Sigala, 2020, para. 4). However, on the flip side, the benefits and lessons learned from the pandemic have given the tourism industry plenty of time and an opportunity to rethink tourism’s growth trajectory and prepare for another catastrophe (authors & Gössling, 2020, page. 13). This paper focuses on the luxury tourism industry and discusses possible effective countermeasures against the possible catastrophe caused by infectious diseases that the earth may face in the future again.

With the Covid-19 pandemic, global tourism trends have changed dramatically, and interestingly, the demand for luxury tourism has risen. This is largely due to the fact that luxury tourism allows people to avoid the risk of spreading infectious diseases more than general mass tourism. In addition, as the pre-pandemic preference for “individual rather than group travel” and “quality rather than quantity” continues to grow, the demand for luxury tourism is expected to increase. In conclusion, the key to success in the post-Corona era will be the ability to create and discover sustainable business models that can withstand major pandemic disasters. The three keywords for business models in the post-Corona era are "Nature", "SMART", and "Multi-tasking".

The difference between an infectious disease disaster and a natural disaster is that natural disasters such as hurricanes, volcanoes, and earthquakes are temporary and have an end, but an infectious disease is a tricky disaster because the damage is expected to span several years. Luxury tourism was also hit hard by Covid-19. This market is also undergoing a major transformation, and it is essential to learn from this pandemic and prepare for another coming pandemic by offering a sustainable and resilient tourism product in the event of any emergency. Luxury tourism is a market segmentation that has been attracting a lot of attention in the industry in recent years as a countermeasure against over-tourism since it can generate a certain amount of income due to its high unit price nevertheless the few tourists. This is why Luxury tourism can survive a catastrophe caused by infectious diseases if preventive measures are taken. There are various types of luxury markets, but the three most important keywords for post-Corona are "Nature," "SMART," and "Multi-tasking”.

1. Nature

One of the things the industry learned from this pandemic is that tourism demand in a pandemic disaster will increase for "less dense travel" to avoid the risk of infectious disease spread. On top of that, travel and Nature, leisure activities such as hiking, outdoor activities, and nature experience tourism, have great potential as a sustainable tourism business even under a pandemic. As an example of luxury, Fiji, for example, is offering a special product where the entire island is rented out to luxury tourists (Royal Davui Fiji, 2020).

Royal Davui Island Fiji is one of the best private Fiji resorts for couples

Other island nations are developing products that combine nature and luxury under the concept of "less dense travel". As mentioned above, the nature sector is a good match for luxury in that it can be used to develop products that can operate even in the event of a pandemic.

2. SMART

In the event of a pandemic, tourism demand will increase for "dense travel" to avoid the risk of spreading infectious diseases as mentioned earlier, and it is essential to restructure the business to accommodate non-contact travel. This is represented by "SMART Tourism''. Restaurants, hotels, airports, and public spaces are now restructuring their operations to be contactless. For example, hotels are now using mobile apps for check-in and check-out, and robots for reception (Sigala, 2020, para. 27).

You can enjoy a luxurious stay with warm customer service and hospitality
made possible by a team of humans and robots!

However, in luxury tourism, the high level of hospitality of the tourism-related staff is also included as product quality. Therefore, it is not sufficient to use contactless technology for everything, but it is necessary to use contactless technology where tourists feel the need for hospitality.

3. Multi-tasking

Multitasking is the mainstreaming of one person doing another's job and it contributes to the issue of reduced redundancy and retaining employees in this crisis (Kaushal & Srivastava, 2021, page. 4). However, multitasking from another angle is also necessary. HIS, a travel agency in Japan, is a unique company that operates hotels and theme parks in addition to its agency business, but it was uniformly hit hard by the pandemic because all its related businesses were tourism-related.

Not only the theme park, but also HIS runs Japanese Soba restaurant in Tokyo.

Therefore, this company moved into completely unrelated businesses that do not depend on tourism, such as supporting overseas exports of Japanese sake and the restaurant business (HIS, 2019). In the post-corona era, if a hotel can only operate a hotel, it will be damaged in the same way when the same kind of infectious disease occurs again. As a countermeasure, one of the keys is to build a completely different business model that does not fully rely on tourism.

CONCLUSION

This article has argued that how luxury tourism can prepare for the next coming pandemic in the future based on the theme of “Covid-19 and Tourism”. This pandemic will be a turning point in the history of the industry, as the entire industry is undergoing major changes. It will be interesting to see if the same mistakes will be made again when another pandemic occurs, or if luxury tourism will learn from this disaster and become sustainable and resilient to any emergency.

REFERENCES

Sigala, M. (2020, September). Tourism and covid-19: Impacts and implications for advancing and resetting industry and research. Journal of business research. Retrieved October 5, 2021, from
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7290228/

authors, A., & Gössling, S. (2020, April). Pandemics, tourism and global change: A rapid assessment of covid-19. Taylor & Francis. Retrieved October 5, 2021, from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09669582.2020.1758708.

Fiji's Private Island Resort: Adults only Luxury Resort. Royal Davui Fiji. (2020, October 8). Retrieved October 5, 2021, from https://royaldavuifiji.com/

About his group: His Group. Corporate site. (2019, December 12). Retrieved October 5, 2021, from https://www.his.co.jp/en/company/group/

Kaushal, V., & Srivastava, S. (2021, January). Hospitality and tourism industry amid covid- 19 pandemic: Perspectives on challenges and learnings from India. International journal of hospitality management. Retrieved October 5, 2021, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7528873/.