Travel and Tourism in the Time of Coronavirus

by Colton Campbell (IEDC Intern)

Since the community lockdowns started in early March, we have seen Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day, three of the major US holidays, come and go during times of crowd restriction, social distancing protocol, or quarantine. With summer holidays and vacations now in the rear-view, the next few months will bring more major holidays and potential for travel including spring break season in 2021. New strategies for health and safety are going to be of the utmost importance moving forward. 

Recently, IEDC hosted a webinar titled, “Wish You Were Here: Tourism in a New Age” in which economic development professionals and tourism experts discussed the strategies to drive interest and maintain travel market share even in downtimes. 

In addition to Miami and San Francisco, the webinar featured the work of the Great Lakes Bay Region Community Visitors’ Bureau, which had recently been the subject of national news with flooding in Midland, MI. The bureau highlighted four pillars of focus in their recovery plans, which included recovery from the flooding, as well as their pandemic response.  

  • Community First - Primary focus should be on the desires and needs of your constituents and strengthening relationships between CVBs, EDOs, and Chambers to collaborate around recovery.
  • Organizational Stability and Sustainability - CVBs must have a stable structure and have a grasp on possible funding sources to be able to work effectively with the local EDOs and Chambers. 
  • Advocacy – EDOs and CVBs working together expand the reach of influence, and allow projects to be advocated to more government officials more effectively.
  • Customer Re-Engagement – When residents of your community feel comfortable for visitors to come, then the re engagement process may begin. Outreach and marketing can resume and must highlight the safety precautions that your community will be taking.  

Moving Forward

There have already been many new strategies implemented for travel and will continue to be used moving forward. In an overview of future trends in tourism, UK website site LoveHolidays points out that social distancing protocols will likely continue into the future. Mask wearing on aircrafts and in public spaces like airports will be commonplace. Temperature checks and thermal cameras that are being added to airports now might become a new normal for travelers. In terms of lodging, hotels will increase sanitation, move to online check ins, and redesign lobbies for more room to socially distance.

Unique Opportunity

This unprecedented time of travel reduction also presents a unique opportunity for more work to be done aligning sustainability with travel and tourism. A United Nations report explains, “The COVID-19 crisis is a watershed moment to align the effort of sustaining livelihoods dependent on tourism to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and ensuring a more resilient, inclusive, carbon neutral, and resource efficient future.” The report lists five priority areas: 

  1. Manage the crisis and mitigate the socio-economic impacts on livelihoods, particularly on women’s employment and economic security. 
  2. Boost competitiveness and build resilience. 
  3. Advance innovation and the digitalization of the tourism ecosystem. 
  4. Foster sustainability and inclusive green growth.
  5. Coordination and partnerships to transform tourism and achieve sustainable development goals.