How Will The New Normal in Travelling Look Like?

(Image Credits: Google)

After almost 100 years, the world is facing a pandemic that can only be controlled with social distancing and can only end with a vaccine.

Just like every night ends with a beautiful dawn, this pandemic will also end and will end for good.

When the pandemic ends, the world will face a new normal, a new post COVID-19 era to deal with. Daily activities like cinemas, sports, restaurants etc. will resume. Also, travelling and adventure sports will resume once things get better. But, the next trip that you take won’t resemble the last one.

There are questions like, “Will travel become purpose-based?”, “How will the tourism sector look post COVID-19?”, “How cautiously will people travel?” and a lot of other questions.

But the most important question is, are all these questions inclined towards post COVID-19 or post lockdown?

In this blog, let me shed some light on the new normal post COVID-19 or post lockdown in travel. I will also analyse and discuss some new opportunities & challenges that might arise.

1. Domestic Tourism Will Increase

People who want to badly take a break from their monotonous life will start opting for domestic destinations. There are multiple reasons behind it.

(Image Credits: Google)

Every country has taken a hit due to the virus. Famous travel destinations in Europe and other parts of the world have been badly affected. Due to this, people wanting to travel will avoid international destinations because of two main reasons.
→ Fear of contracting the virus
→ Fear of being stuck internationally incase of another lockdown

The economic impact and job losses will strongly impact the purchasing power of people. So, people will be able to spend on domestic travel but not on international travel.

In case of international travel (most of which happens through flights), airlines will have to follow proper social distancing rules and provide better hygiene to passengers. Masks will be compulsory. Amidst all of this, people won’t prefer longer-haul international flights due to less comfort.

Assuming that most of the countries will still be in the recovering mode once travelling starts, they won’t be able to provide similar experiences to the travellers like they used to. Because of which, the craze for international travel will decrease and people will start exploring places domestically.

2. Behaviour Change In Travellers

We usually plan well in advance if we want to travel. We book flights without getting much into details other than the date, timing and the number of stops. Let us look at how people will change their behaviour in the new normal.

Travellers will start focusing on personal security. Before the virus, people used to cancel the automatically selected option of travel insurance while booking flights or hotels. Post this, people will start focusing more on insuring their flights, hotels and basically most of their travel plans.

(Image Credits: Google)

While booking tickets, travellers will start focusing more on the cancellation policies and cancellation charges. Till date, the majority of the population has focused on buying cheap non-refundable tickets. This will decrease post lockdown.

While travelling, the use of crowded public transport like buses, local trains, trams, metros etc will decrease. People will rather spend more on taxis

Because of the fear of another wave and another lockdown, spontaneous travel will increase. Advance bookings will decrease and plans will be made based on prevailing situations. Also, people will pay premium charges for flexible bookings in case of advance bookings. This will indirectly boost the travel sector because of dynamic fares.

(Image Credits: Google)

The hostel culture in India has grown very rapidly with the growth in solo travelling. I believe that hostels will take long to recover because backpackers will prefer to go for individual accommodations to minimize the risk of infections.

Preference will be given to shorter weekend road trips. The use of private cars and personal taxis will increase because people will want to minimize rail and air travel. This will benefit individual tours and travels companies.

MIT Tekadi (Pune)

When you have such places in the cities and around cities and more like this in India, why travel internationally? (Above pictures clicked by me)

Travellers will find satisfaction in the smallest of things. Even one-day trips and weekend getaways will be appreciated.

Family trips will be avoided if there are kids or old people in the family because of their vulnerability to the virus.

Travellers will always carry bottles of sanitizers and avoid touching things in public places. Most of them will also carry home-cooked food and will avoid experimenting with local food.

Scenic places with a lot of crowd will be avoided and preference will be given to staying at premium properties and resorts because of their facilities that would not want you to go out and also because of their better hygiene and sanitation measures. Most of the hotels and resorts would not want to lose business to private homestays and AirBnb. So the sanitation standards and hygiene standards will always be maintained in the hotels.

Preference will be given to travel to open and natural environments with less crowd as compared to the urban crowded tourism.

The most important behaviour change not in travellers but locals will be that they will not see travellers only as a business opportunity but they will also see them as sanitary threats. This might lead to movements against tourism/travel.

3. Touchless Travel Will Increase

More touchless travel options will come into the picture post lockdown. For example:
→ Contactless Fingerprint for Registration: Scanning your fingerprint on your smartphone device and connecting it with the system for touchless registrations in hotels and resorts.
→ Technology for touchless data-entry and document scanning will improve by using voice commands.
→ Offline bookings will decrease and there will be a drastic increase in the number of individual booking apps with verification.

To sum it up, the opportunities and challenges that might arise are-

Opportunities:

1. Insurance policies, flexible bookings
2. New standards in hygiene, safety, health and well-being
3. Domestic travel
4. New destinations (less crowded, nearer, safer)
5. Open spaces and nature
6. Experiences that reduce anxiety
7. Travel risk reduction services
8. Alternative modes of transportation

Challenges:

1. Group travel
2. Corporate travel
3. International travel
4. Crowded tourist destinations

Here are some less crowded places I have been to and you can also visit post lockdown-

1. Garudmaachi, Maharashtra
2. Satpura National Park, Madhya Pradesh
3. Pachmarhi, Madhya Pradesh
4. Dang, Gujarat

So, how will the new normal in travelling look like?

Travel was about finding experiences; now it will be about minimizing anxiety.

STAY SAFE, WEAR MASKS & MAINTAIN SOCIAL DISTANCING!