Tui CEO Fritz Joussen commented in Tui’s recent results, that the tour operator would be putting more emphasis on digitalising sales and moving them online, at the expense of its high street network, because he felt that the Covid-19 outbreak has forced shopping habits further online.

In the short term, it’s difficult to argue against this theory, as most high street shops will remain shut until 1st June 2020 at the earliest. A full lockdown of 3 months, which has forced customers to move online.

This trend is set to continue as Social distancing and restrictions, preventing customers from trying on clothes, will further damage this distribution channel. Customers may be willing to queue outside supermarkets for food, but will they be willing to enter 10-15 separate queues on a “browsing” Saturday shopping trip.

We are likely to see a growth in “Cross Channel” shopping, where customers review samples in the flesh, but ease the shopping process, by capturing a QR code and ordering their size for home delivery via their phones or even gain “Fast Pass” appointments to return later to beat queues.

However, I do feel these “natural” changes are being accelerated by imbalanced taxation structures, where “business rates” are strangling the high street. Although high street rents are reducing to reflect the balance between supply and demand, business rates continue to increase as local council’s become desperate for revenues to balance their books.

On the other hand, we hear regular reports about how internet retail giants like Google, Facebook and Amazon via clever legal structures, are paying minimal taxation in the UK as a whole and zero to local councils.

If we want to save our high streets, I propose an increase of online VAT payments to 25%, with the extra 5% being allocated to the postcodes that goods are delivered too. It would take no more than 2-3 days to create the computer programs required to “tag” sales with the postcode they are delivered to, along with the 5% Vat attributable, so that it could be paid to central government and then passed on to fund local councils.

This new VAT income, which is similar to “state sales taxes” in the USA, would allow local councils to reduce business rates and rebalance cost structures in favour of the high street.

However, do customers want to save the high street?

I believe that the high street is a key plank in the UK’s Social community, providing an opportunity for all ages to meet and spend time with friends, shopping and enjoying a coffee or in my case a quick beer.

Do we really want grate swaths of derelict town centres to spring up, because of our consumerist desire for cheaper online goods?

The answer may well be yes, but lets at least allow shops to fight on a level playing field, by counterbalancing business rates with a higher online VAT bill.

It’s a simple and deliverable idea.

The government’s 14-day self-isolation policy for returning holidaymakers has effectively put a ban on flight-based overseas holidays for summer 2020.

It has also left many travel companies with excess staff they would obviously like the government to continue supporting through furlough, as well as unused retail facilities.

The policy effectively puts travel staff in the same bracket as pubs and clubs as the last sectors to be able to return to work. There is, therefore, a strong argument for government assistance.

However, a continuation of furlough by sector is fraught with difficulties, and you can easily see some taxpayers objecting to the government continuing to pay substantial subsidies for some sectors while their staff take risks returning to work as they struggle with the economic downturn.

So how about an extension to the furlough scheme for travel in exchange for becoming a “track and trace” resource?

One radical solution, to mitigate any backlash, would be for the travel sector to take a leaf out of the wartime “Land Girls” and ask: ’What can we do for our country in the war against Covid-19?’

The travel community currently has multiple empty shops on most UK high streets. These are equipped with modern computer equipment and staff used to dealing with members of the public.

Why not re-purpose these shops and the large call centres travel business operate, into coronavirus track and trace facilities in the short-term.

In order for the government to effectively operate appointment-based testing, along with complex track and trace contact strategies, it will need to dramatically ramp up the volume of staff it has.

These staff will need to operate a brand new technology platform and to follow up automated alert-based contact with phone calls to reassure people and to make next-step arrangements. In some cases, this will just involve self-isolation. But in many, it will require testing for Covid-19.

To be 100% clear, I am not suggesting travel agency staff take frontline testing roles; this clearly carries a risk of infection and is likely to continue to be operated by medical professionals or the Army.

However, I do think the travel community does have some excess resource the Government could rent on a short-term basis, allowing travel business to retain staff while mitigating costs when travel remains on effective lockdown.

Besides asking what the government is going to do for travel, maybe we should be asking ourselves what can we do for our country?

The quicker we win the war against Covid-19, the quicker we can return to sending people on holiday and rebuilding our prosperous industry; like those who remained at home during World War Two, we may have to re-invent ourselves for a period of time.

Airlines could consolidate flights and not everyone will be raring to go, says Steve Endacott

Greece’s announcement that it is suspending its travel ban and allowing hotels to open from June 1 is obviously welcome news for the UK travel industry.

I personally expect its example to be followed by other destinations, such as Spain’s Balearics and Canaries, which will struggle to access surges in self-drive domestic markets, as they require inbound flights to deliver the volume of tourism required to support their hotel infrastructure.

We all know that social distancing simply does not work for beach holidays, as it is virtually impossible to deliver this at airports, on flights or at large buffet-style hotels.

However, the government’s need to get the UK back to work should provide the solutions we need in travel shortly as testing and tracking replaces lockdown and self-isolating as the key methods of stopping the spread of Covid-19.

Unfortunately, travellers will probably have to get used to the wearing of face masks and gloves while flying, as well as airport testing, before international ‘immunity passports’ are agreed.

In the meantime, not all destinations will open up for UK visitors and we still wait with bated breath to see if the UK government will introduce 14-day quarantine measures for returning Brits on Sunday, when the program for relaxing lockdown and back to work measures are expected to be announced.

Another key consideration is whether UK customers are ready to return to holiday travel yet.

I know I am, and if allowed I would travel on all the trips I have booked as I have paid for them and getting a refund, as we know, is problematic, to say the least. I hope customers will be equally gung-ho, but fear many will not.

EasyJet has already announced that a return to flying by lowcost carriers will be gradual and this may require flight consolidation.

Airlines currently define it as a ‘minor’ change, requiring no compensation, if a flight is changed within six hours of the original departure time. It is therefore likely that airlines will try to consolidate all passengers booked to depart on a day to a single destination, eg Majorca, onto one flight. Airlines will no longer have to refund customers once they can get one flight per day to a destination from a departure airport.

If they adopt a more brutal approach, they may try to consolidate customers from a departure region, says the North West, into one airport and cancel the other airport’s flights (for example, switch customers from Manchester to Liverpool or vice versa. This is less likely as it would represent a “significant” flight change and force the offering of a refund if the customer does not want to accept it.

The one thing that is guaranteed is that not all customers will be happy to travel because of the threat of Covid-19. Some may wish to cancel but find themselves unable to get their money back if they do so.

Logically, they can only blame the airline. But logic does not always come into it. Unfortunately, travel agents could be soon caught in the middle again, as they will be unable to cancel a holiday because the airline is offering a flight to a destination and the customer cannot claim on their travel insurance because the holiday is operating.

So, as well as some happy customers glad to be able to get away, the industry could soon be facing a second wave of Covid-19 unrest amongst its loyal customers.

Everything has changed says Rebounds Seamus Conlon and Steve Endacott

In between those moments when we are giving thanks to the NHS, or watching yet another webinar or in yet another family zoom quiz, most of us are trying to figure out what this change will mean for our industry, our ambitions, our incomes.

The key question ‘will it go back to how it was?’, for once, has a simple answer. No, it won’t.

It is unlikely that there will be any significant international leisure travel this year, with holiday travel within the UK probably a more realistic goal.

International borders are likely to remain closed to leisure travel until there is a vaccine, which is not a given, or until there are rapid testing kits that are certified by all countries.

Similarly, a lot of customers will be put off travelling because of worries about finding themselves in foreign hospitals or quarantined on cruise ships or in hotels.

Remember, these scenes are still fresh in customers’ minds.

The timing of when people can travel and feel safe doing so has a huge impact on how deep the changes to the country and our industry will be.

Governments, companies and individuals are likely to have significantly more debt and less reserves.

Governments can simply borrow more or print more money but, unfortunately, financing is much less flexible for companies and individuals.

I am optimistic that all governments will try to help their economies with stimulus and growth strategies rather than the austerity of old, but we are still going into a very bad recession no matter what.

As an industry, we should be lobbying hard to get our fair share of that stimulus and thinking how it would be best targeted.

Should the government invest in domestic tourism over outbound tourism? Should future government stimulus be targeted at carbon reducing tourism rather than reinventing old models?

As an industry, we also need to look at how coronavirus will impact how we deliver travel, sell travel and staff our travel business.

Delivering travel and social distancing

Social distancing is likely to be with us for a while, so how will that work in the practical delivery of travel?

This raises a number of questions and the prospect of many implications for all forms of travel and retailing:

• Will the middle seat on aeroplanes really be left empty? This alone could put flight costs up by 30%;
• Will airlines and hotels have to test clients for coronavirus at check-in, requiring much earlier arrivals. Will in-flight face masks be compulsory;
• Will trust accounts become the norm, given the refund civil wars;
• Will customers want private taxi transfers in resort instead of traditional coaches;
• Will all-inclusive become more popular, because it requires less mixing and availability of local restaurants;
• Will the demographics of travellers change next year with young people grabbing bargains, families hesitant and older people unable to travel;
• Will travel agencies install the Perspex glass that now encloses supermarket checkouts around consultants’ desks;
• Will this, or other measures, mean they lose out to homeworkers using Zoom to connect to clients;
• Will sunbeds in hotels and on cruise ships be separated by six feet (one can but hope!);
• Will customers use contactless cards kill the forex bureau business;
• Will you be able to get insurance for coronavirus disruption and medical cover;
• Where will the liability rest in the future if you sell a holiday and the customer contracts COVID-19 at the hotel or on a cruise ship.

I don’t think any of us really know how to deliver social distancing when travelling yet.

But I do think that travel will have to do a lot more than just telling customers to wash their hands and cough into their elbows.

And customers will want their travel provider to make the necessary changes.

The impact on selling travel

Social media and streaming services have grown exponentially, online shopping is booming, video chats and webinars are the norm and the longer we have in lockdown or extreme social distancing, the more this behaviour will be the norm, if it is not already.

Conversely, no one is visiting travel agencies, few people are buying newspapers, people are getting less direct mail, less brochures are being read.

Are consumers really going to resume these behaviours?

I personally am a huge advocate of the human consultant selling model in travel and I believe the increased use of email, video chat, Facebook and Instagram will make great consultants even more precious, but I am not sure why anyone needs to walk to a shop.

I would much prefer a Zoom appointment with a consultant.

The growth of video chat and social media, when weighed against current empty high streets, leads Rebound Consulting to predict that the likely post-coronavirus winner will be homeworking networks.

Running a travel business

Yes, it has been a long lockdown. Yes, it has been difficult at times with all of us getting re-used to living together 24/7.

Yes, I have missed the office, the routine, knowing what day of the week it is, but I do not want to go back to a daily commute and working in an office five days a week.

Working from home is possible for huge numbers of jobs and it has just been proven on an indisputable scale. The genie is out of the bottle.

Allowing your staff to work two or three days a week from home is likely to become the norm.

This will see smaller offices, new management styles and cheaper coffee/tea bills as employees drink their own.

After government-funded furloughs, travel companies will be forced to cut costs.

Will marketing and IT roles remain in house, or will companies want more flexibility and wider talent by using freelance sites like PeoplePerHour.com and Fiverr.com?

Video conferencing breaks geographical restrictions and widens the talent catchment area. Will more travel jobs become more freelance?

Adapt now to the new future, there will be no going back once the rebound comes.

Carriers have lost their ‘cloaks of invincibility’, says Steve Endacott

The UK travel industry needs a healthy airline sector to operate, so I was pleased to see that easyJet, British Airways and, hopefully soon, Virgin Atlantic have secured extra funding and look relatively safe so long as the flying lockdown does not stretch further than six months.

David Speakman, founder of Travel Counsellors, has been highly critical of the airlines and widely quoted describing them as “operating a Ponzi scheme” where they demand full payment from customers on booking and then use customer cash as they see fit.

Recent research by Bank of America seems to support this view. The bank looked at the amount of money each airline banked from un-flown flights (much of which will need to be refunded) as a percentage of how much cash it had in the bank.

As you can see from the accompanying chart, a few airlines like Ryanair had enough cash to afford refunds – irrespective of how easy they have made getting these – but many did not.

I appreciate airlines need cash up front to buy or lease capital-intensive assets like aircraft and customers benefit from this in the form of efficient new aircraft and lower prices.

Most airlines have been able to raise substantial funds to prevent collapse, showing robustness in their models – although David Speakman may rightly argue that these loans have been secured on the basis of airlines being able to access billions in unprotected consumer cash as soon as they start flying again.

So should airlines be forced to follow online travel agents and retailers in adopting trust fund models?

In that case, a customer’s cash would only be released to airlines once the customer has flown.

I’m sure airlines would argue these measures would be “draconian” given their capital intensive nature and the current financial pressure they are under.

But if agents and hoteliers aren’t allowed to use customer cash as interest-free loans why are airlines? Why should airlines be allowed use customer money before they provide the service contracted?

Ironically, in the short term the airlines’ credit card clearers are enforcing ‘quasi’ trust funds by holding on to billions of airlines’ cash as protection against the high level of credit-card recharges they are expecting on cancelled flights. So the hit on cash flow may not be as large as people think.

Ultimately, I’m in no doubt the right thing would be to force airlines to protect customers cash 100% with trust funds, but I accept this may take a number of years to deliver.

In the short term, the priority needs to be getting UK airlines flying again so they are able to deliver deferred flights or refund customers. I would not want anything that risks this.

However, in the post-corona environment regulators must accept airlines are riskier and at least level the bonding playing field.

Many airlines will have debt mountains to pay down and if they don’t operate trust fund protection they will represent a much bigger risk than trust fund operating OTAs like On the Beach and travel companies and networks such as Travel Counsellors and Trailfinders.

It is ridiculous for airlines to remain unbonded and Atol fee-free while lower-risk businesses are required to fund the replenishment of the Atol fund, which is needed as the ultimate guarantor of consumers’ money.

It is also beyond ridiculous that when the next airline fails the government will repatriate all UK citizens whether they have paid fees for repatriation or not.

It is time the CAA finally implemented its stated desire for an ‘all seats levy”.

This could be collected across all flights leaving the UK whether a customer has DIY booked a holiday via Google, using low-cost carrier sites and un-bonded bed banks like Booking.com, or has brought the same package via an OTA, homeworker or high street travel agent.

The current Atol fund is virtually empty after the Thomas Cook collapse and will be further hit via travel collapses in the next six months.

It is likely the current £2.50 per passenger fee will have to double to £5.00, but at least it will replenish much quicker if airlines also have to pay.

In the longer term, the CAA should enforce trust funds across the board or charge a hefty premium to the standard Atol fee for any company refusing to implement this basic level of protection for customer funds.

I wish all UK airlines a successful rebound, but if coronavirus has done anything it has removed their false ‘cloak of invincibility. They need to be brought into the consumer protection fold.

The Government has done an excellent job of putting the country’s business community into Hibernation, via its Furlough scheme, whereby companies using Government funding, have been able to effectively close their businesses on a temporary basis, whilst paying staff 80% of their salaries up to a maximum of £2,500 per month.

The Government has also enabled high street Banks to issue government-backed loans to companies who can show a profitable track record over the 18 months before the Corona Virus outbreak and has even helped the Self-employed.

The glaring gap is assistance to Start-up businesses. 

Steve Endacott, Co-Founder of Rebound Consulting commented, “ I have seen hundreds of start-up business and a common denominator, is that the business plan is often to lose money in the first 2 years whilst they reach critical mass and then make profits from year 3 onwards, with a hockey stick rise in profits thereafter.

My own Holiday Taxis Group followed this path and ended up carrying 7million passengers and being sold successfully, but if it had been started in the last 2 years, I believe the Corona Virus would have bankrupted it. 

Start-up’s like most businesses will be using Furlough grants to stagger on for the moment, but once these grants stop many will not have the capital required to relaunch and will quickly fail unless they can raise further funding.

Many private investors will be looking at the predictions of a recession, as bad as the Great Recession of the 1930s and will be hesitant to invest further.  Unless the Government reduces their risk by creating a loan fund to match their investments

“Governments by their nature,  are not well-positioned to assess the quality of start up’s management team or business plan, likewise banks tend to focus their loan approvals on historic numbers rather than the typical optimism of most start-up business plans, but “Angel” investors who are risking their money in the form of equity investments are”, said Rebounds Will Waggott.

Rebound Consulting is calling on the Government to match investors money with government loans.

Seamus Conlon said “Start-ups will still need to convince private individuals to take the largest risk, with “All or nothing” equity investments, but the Government start-up fund would match this investment, with a loan repayable after 3 years trading, paid off over a further 5 years. This type of long term loan would allow the business to grow in the crucial early years creating wealth and jobs for the country.”

“The government COBIL loans scheme is barely working for existing SMEs, it ignores startups completely”.  

“As we come out of Corona Lockdown, many existing businesses are going to reduce in size and the country will see large scale redundancies and a major surge in unemployment. As usual, the youth of the country may suffer the most, as they find themselves competing with the market place full of experienced and newly redundant workers”, said Will Waggott

Steve Endacott commented “Few Entrepreneurs are created at birth, but start their own business because they have a great idea and often have just lost their jobs. Many people will be using the current lockdown period, to flesh out ideas that they have been tinkering with for a while, in preparation for being made redundant.”

Rebound Consulting believes that the Government needs to help harvest these ideas and create conditions for a wave of new start up’s and support the existing start-ups

Rebound Seamus Conlon commented “Travel is one of the sectors that are likely to suffer the most from the Corona Lockdown and the following recession. However, we know we have a bedrock of creative people, who are customer-focused and used to working in relatively risky business. I think we could easily see the next big thing in travel emerging in the next 18 months with the right support and funding”.

Customer refunds and card chargebacks dominate queries to industry advice portal Rebound Consulting, according to founders Steve Endacott, Seamus Conlon and Will Waggott.

The three industry executives launched the Rebound consultancy to offer free travel business advice at the end of March.

They highlight refunds as the issue most troubling tour operators and retailers seeking advice, with operators struggling to recover deposits paid to hotels or event organisers and forced to defer bookings or issue credit notes.

Even retailers operating trust funds face difficulties, according to Endacott, noting: “A retailer may have cleared £1,200 for a holiday into their trust fund, but paid out £500 for a low-cost flight, with the airline now offering a date change or credit note.

“If the customer wants a refund and recharges their credit card, the retailer not only loses their commission, but also £500 of flight cost they don’t have.”

Endacott said: “Large OTAs like On the Beach may be able to recover their payments from the airlines via recharges on the virtual credit cards they use to book, but many retailers dynamically packaging don’t have this protection and are fully exposed.”

Conlon said: “In principle, customers should always be offered a full refund as an option if a service or product can’t be supplied.

“[But] none of the current rules envisaged a complete cessation of travel or airlines not refunding travel agents or tour operators. We all need to be practical about the timescales of refunds.”

However, Conlon added: “My preference is that companies secure overdrafts and loans to fund expenses rather than rely on customer monies which should have been refunded.

“That way you know you have cash available and don’t have to worry about disgruntled customers destroying the reputation you have built with Facebook posts.”

The Rebound Consulting trio also note that although companies are furloughing staff, many are hesitating to furlough directors or senior staff.

Waggott said: “Furloughing staff closest to you is the hardest decision to make, but often you need admin staff to rebook customers on a rolling basis and not expensive management not used to doing the day-to-day jobs.”

Endacott added: “Most business leaders have got the message about cutting costs to the bone.

“But being the head of a business is a lonely position and I’m been told several times it has helped people to get some reassurance from a third party that the decisions they are making are the right ones.”

He suggests many directors forget to apply the logic they adopt in business to their home life.

Endacott said: “The next nine months are going to be the hardest of our working lives, with most people on furlough or taking large pay cuts.

“However, many people I have spoken to seem to have forgotten about themselves or feel it to be a failure to defer mortgages etc. It’s not, it’s just sensible to take the pressure off at home while you’re going through hell at work.

He said: “I recommend seeking rent or mortgage holidays and suspending as many large outgoings as you can until you’re back to full earnings. You have the rest of your working life to pay these off.”

Endacott was co-founder of Holiday Taxis and a former chief operating officer of On Holiday Group. Waggott was both head of tour operating at Thomas Cook and chief financial officer at Tui. Conlon is a former managing director of Airtours Holidays and TV Travel Shop and non-executive director of Cruise.co.uk.

I have to confess to having been a “Remainer” in the great Brexit debate, as I felt the economic damage of leaving the European single market was large.

However, I do support the new “points-based” immigration system and don’t trust the Euro politicians to be in charge of laws governing the UK. To be fair, I don’t also trust UK politicians but at least we can vote to remove them.

But why are these comments relevant during the coronavirus crisis?

Because, I think other European countries will soon be facing populist pressure to leave the EU. The coronavirus crisis and self-isolating, has made us focused on “family first” and country second.

In reality, Europe has quickly fragmented into individual states, with all boarders shutting and countries focusing their medical resources internally, with few thoughts about acting as a single united European Union, moving resources as required to coronavirus hot spots. Of course there have been some examples of inter-country assistance, but these appear to have been extremely limited.

Economist are telling us that for every month a county is in lockdown, its GDP will fall by 2% and therefore the entire world is predicted to exit the coronavirus lockdown into a recession as bad the 1930s Great Depression.

As a newly ’independent’ country, with our own currency, Britain can use “fiscal easing” to borrow heavily and plough cash into funding measures to counter the coronavirus downturn, such as business rate holidays, further salary subsidisation and investment in infrastructure projects, to name a few.

If needed we can also devalue our currency to make exports cheaper and imports more expensive, whilst introducing whatever import tariffs we believe necessary to protect UK employment. 

People may hate Trump and believe his tariff-led negotiations will cause trade wars, but you can’t deny the boost in US economy since his election – even if it has been at a severe cost in terms of world harmony.

Economically, there are major benefits to European states staying together, including a large tariff free single market and a central bank, able to borrow money at much lower rates, due to the strength of the whole and the balance sheets of the stronger counties like Germany and France, balancing those of weaker economies like Italy, Spain and Greece.

As we have seen with Greece previously, poorer EU counties tied to one currency and a central European bank, have far less leavers to pull to get them out of recession and reduce unemployment levels. Quite often the richer countries, who are there to bail them out, impose stringent austerity policies that are deeply unpopular, in order to ensure their loans are repaid 

We have already seen in the US and other countries, how successful populist politicians can be. Promise the world today and ignore the consequences tomorrow, often gets people elected. So don’t be surprised as we emerge from the coronavirus crisis and head into recession, if Greece, Italy and even Spain’s choose to put the short term above the longer and decide to leave the EU, in order to take back control of their own currencies, laws and economy.

From a travel industry point, the upsides of this are probably greater than the downsides. New currencies often devalue, making the destination better value for holidaymakers. These newly independent counties will in turn want to continue to attract UK tourist and should have aggressive tourist boards providing co-funding for advertising. I also can’t imagine visa or fifth freedom flying rights being an issue with major holiday destination like these.

In hindsight, perhaps the UK exiting the EU ahead of the coronavirus fallout will turn out not to have been such a bad idea after all.

In the first of a series of blog posts, the travel veterans behind

Reboundconsulting.co.uk share practical steps SME travel businesses should take to navigate through the crisis

The government’s key focus is locking down the country. To facilitate this they have generously introduced the Job Retention Scheme, allowing non-essential staff to be furloughed and paid 80% of their salaries. However, don’t expect such a generous scheme to be in place for long – businesses should be planning on staff either re-joining the payroll or being laid off before we exit the full impact of the coronavirus.

The government’s next focus will be avoiding large-scale job losses and large travel firms such as airlines which employ a lot of staff in the UK and have strategic benefits, may receive further emergency support to stave of collapse. But even this may come at the cost of giving the government substantial equity stakes.

SME businesses can apply for the government’s loan scheme, but again these loans are by no means free and although every qualifying business should take them to improve liquidity, they should be used with extreme caution, as they are not free and will have to be repaid.

Cut all cost possible to survive today

SME travel companies can only survive this crisis by cutting overheads as near to nil as possible. If you have no income, you cannot have any overheads.

Although it is emotionally difficult, staff have to be furloughed, and that means everyone who is not absolutely necessary, needs to be sent home. Those staff who have stayed on will not expect to be paid more than 80% of their salaries, so don’t pay it. The harsh reality for many travel businesses, is that if they don’t take advantage of the government furlough scheme they will run out cash quickly and go bust.

All other overheads need to be renegotiated and cut. Here are some key ones to start with:

• Stop paying business rates for a year and defer VAT payments till June

• Renegotiate rents with landlords. Ask for a payment break or deferral

• Computer maintenance and all other office related expenditure needs to be cancelled where possible

Effectively, your business needs to be mothballed as soon as possible.

Cash is king

Cutting overheads to as close as nil as possible will clearly help cash. But every of route of cash retention needs to be considered:

• All suppliers should be contacted for cash refunds and/or cash support for the business

• Customers need to be given credit notes instead of cash refunds where ever possible

• Secure any government-backed loan possible, but don’t spend it unless you absolutely have to

Plan for the rebound

The rebound will come, but your business cannot be the same as before the crisis. You need to be leaner, keener and work smarter.

You know who the core members of staff are, the ones willing to go the extra mile and on the journey with you. It’s time to let those who aren’t go and replace them with better staff. Homeworking will be the norm, so embrace it and use it to recruit better staff from a wider catchment area.

Spend the quiet time you have now to work out solutions for all those inefficiencies you will have lived with for years. Sometimes this involves technology, but often it’s just about reviewing processes and cutting out the inefficient, “that’s how we have always done it”, bits people do.

Marketing costs money, so focus now on re-engaging with previous bookers to make sure you have their latest contact details and remind them you are there for their holiday needs when the rebound does come.

Using your time wisely costs nothing and can save a lot of money when the rebound comes, so start thinking and planning now.

The UK Government has already ordered 3.5 million Corona Test kits, to allow self-testing of whether people have already had the Corona Virus and have developed the IMG/IGG antibodies, that hopefully indicate immunity to re-infection. At the moment nobody can be 100% sure such immunity does exist, but all experts believe this is likely to be the case.

The Government will need to support these test, with a formal and centralised registry, that issues “Corona Clear Certificates” and this may require positive tests to be ratified in a similar way to passports, by teachers or qualified accountants etc, since medically trained staff are likely to remain fully deployed elsewhere.

These certificates will initially be vital for identifying the element of the population that already have had the disease and have enough immunity to allow them back to work. It’s obviously vital to get the economy moving again, with most experts hopeful that this can occur after the peak of infections has passed and some semblance of control has returned to the NHS.

However, the travel industry needs to accept that opening boarders to allow leisure travel is likely to remain a relatively low priority for most countries.

Boarder where originally shut down as part of the “containment” stage, where Governments try to restrict the entry of the virus into their countries, from other infected countries.

Once the virus has got a hold in a country, it is then “locked down” to try to smooth out the peak of infections, to allow medical services like the NHS to cope.

Some travel observers have predicted the opening of boarders as soon as the peak has passed, as the closure does little to slow the spread of the disease at this stage, compared to the banning of mass gathering or local gatherings in pubs etc. 

I personally think there will be a much longer delay as international Governments are likely to insist on an accredited “Corona Clear Certificate” for foreign visitors, before they will be allowed entry to the country. These certificates will be used in conjunction with passports, but are likely to be issued via electronic means, so they can be scanned from mobile phones.

These certificates are also likely to form part of airlines APIS systems, since like Visa’s the airlines will be made responsible for checking customers have the required paper work to enter a country, before boarding.

Therefore, the industry via ABTA and other trade bodies needs to be lobbying hard to make sure they are included in any Corona Clear Certificate planning, so that all airlines and travel companies can adjust their systems during the quite shut down period, long before the first buds of travel start to blossom again.

I remain optimistic that the good times will return to travel, but feel that we need to take our destiny into our own hands and actively work on the removal of any potential barrier to the resumption of travel now.