September news
Covid 19 remains #1 in the news globally with various countries varying in percentages of people with CV19 and variation of who those people are. The UK is still high in infections with the youth being the main area right now. This is shown by the high R rate, high positive tests by youth and also the low numbers of hospitalised patients due to the youth being least affected.
Over the summer holidays there were a lot of groups of young people having parties and/or going away on holiday which has obviously resulted in the present situation. This is likely to be exacerbated by students going to university as the numbers going are higher this year due to the attraction of a gap year being very low this year.
The UK and Scandinavian travel industries are still struggling for long haul travel. Domestic travel has boomed all over the UK and Scandinavia with people rediscovering their own and neighbouring countries which to many are even better when not full of overseas tourists. However, there is still massive pent up demand for overseas and long haul, this has been shown every time a border opens and bookings flood in. Consumer confidence in the UK has been dented by rules around quarantine for countries keeping on changing so you may be OK to go/return simply for one country when booking but the situation may have changed when you travel.
The travel trade has lost some key companies in STA Travel and Travel 2 but there are green shoots here already with the like of https://www.sytetravel.co.uk/ and no doubt there will be more.
Trailfinders and Audley are standing out as having almost no redundancies where most other agents are down to 20% - 50% of pre-Covid staff levels. This is the case in UK and Scandinavia with a slightly higher staff retention in the UK so far due to more generous furlough scheme.
Maldives, Caribbean and Middle East are getting bookings but obviously nothing is happening for USA, Australia and New Zealand. The tourism boards are keeping their countries in the limelight with training events and on-line quizzes. TNZ and TA both report a big surge in their specialist programs as staff have time and desire to learn on-line due to lack of alternatives. There have also been Covid updates on new procedures by many companies as this is key for any agent making a sales as it is the first question any customer asks.
Personally, my role was made redundant by THL as international sales have obviously dropped to zero so I have now set up Tailor Made Representation as I believe all companies need support but none are likely to hire staff direct anymore due to the lack of flexibility that this creates. I am happy to represent any companies that need anything from a short or long term project, just updates on the market and one day per month support to full-time support. That is the point of Tailor Made, flexibility will be very important over the next 6-12 months but we all need to do something as doing nothing will always end badly.
I have also set up My Training Guru https://mytraining.guru/ with some close industry contacts and friends. This is an on-line training platform targeted at specialist agents and products that I believe is long overdue. This should be very popular during and after the Covid situation as agents need to be kept up to date on all products and changes (more now than ever with new Covid procedures). The MTG platform has full reporting so everyone can see what is getting through and what is being missed. Again, I believe that now is the time for training to prepare for the future rather than trying to catch up when borders re-open and the low numbers of remaining staff are swamped.
I hope all is well out there and please give me a shout with any comments or ideas.