Gino Engels in HospitalityNet: How to navigate coronavirus disruption in travel

Last week, OTA Insight shared its heatmap view of how unpredictable events like coronavirus impact market demand over time. This week, Co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer, Gino Engels headlined HospitalityNet, with more insights into how to navigate disruption in travel caused by COVID-19.

You can read the full article on HospitalityNet; here’s how it starts…

The coronavirus is an ongoing tragedy for those worst affected, and everyone's focus should be on containing it. However, it's also wreaking havoc on the global travel industry, and it's sensible to look for ways to navigate the crisis and mitigate some of the negative commercial impact in the year ahead.

With the global spread of the virus forcing some countries into lockdown and airlines cancelling both domestic and international flights from certain regions, both leisure and business travel segments are taking a major hit. The impact is made much more severe since China was the world's largest outbound tourism market in 2019, with 159 million outbound travellers accounting for 12.2% of all outbound travel and spending USD 275 billion.

As the virus reaches deeper into other countries, conferences and events are being cancelled. The result is double-digit drops in occupancy in many regions, such as South Korea and Europe, which is losing Euro 1 billion per month in tourism dollars as Italy grapples with its own outbreak. In other regions, the impact is thankfully not as severe, as 88% of US travelers have yet to cancel their travel plans and strong interest in tropical destinations in Mexico and the Caribbean.

No one can predict how long it will take to get the pandemic under control. Hotels everywhere should plan for a protracted downturn that upends financial projections for the year ahead. With that in mind, here are four things that you can do to navigate the impact of the coronavirus on your hotel's business.

Gino’s article goes on to discuss strategies such as:

• Being proactive in your approach in regards to both staff and guests
• Staying calm and adjusting your marketing strategy
• Maintaining relevance whilst usual travel patterns are disturbed
• Using data to adjust to real-time changes in the market

Read the full article on HospitalityNet.