Post Covid-19 for Tourism and Tour Companies.
When the lockdown finally ends and tourism resumes, expect things to be different, big tourism companies will have to restructure and do business differently in order to keep and find new clients.
In the process of restructuring the business tour operators/companies have to change the following;
The corona virus (covid-19) has changed business perhaps forever and the business managers especially in the tourism sector have to reinvent their product offers to survive in the post-corona virus economy.
The President of Uganda even admitted that, one of the sectors that have been hit hard and will take time to it recover is the tourism sector.
Additionally the World Tourism Organization (WTO) also warned that the tourism industry is one of the hardest-hit sectors as lock downs on land, in the air and on water has brought business crashing.
The tourism players in a sector that contributed Shs8.3 trillion worth of GDP by 2018 admitted that things are not going to be good in the short run and that they should plan better and smarter in the post covid-19 tourism world.
- a) The most important thing for tour operators should first do is to stay alive and keep communicating with the world.
One way they could stay alive is to spend more time and resources on social media marketing telling their clients that they are still in business because clients must see that you are still in business and also should be able to feel you. - b) Companies should invest more in creating blogs, doing online conferences, uploading videos on whatever they are doing and plan to do, this gives clients confidence the tour company.
- c) Companies with money should hire excellent content writers to sell their business and to carry out research and understand what is likely to take place after Covid-19 passes,that is the strategies should be lined out and online presence should be felt.
Planning
Making domestic tourism work as one waits for other countries to open up their airports and borders is the new plan post covid-19. An example is to develop discounted short term packages for the local market as the international market will take at least 12 months.
Tourism Outlook and Solutions after Covid-19
Post Covid-19 mode of tourism is likely to change and clients are likely to do shorter trips for fear of contracting the disease. Hence the tourism players have to think about doing things the unusual way.
– One way is to think about how to redesign products and services because tourists will want to go to countries that were not so badly hit by the disease for safety reasons and good conditions for travel.
– In America or Britain, people are still in their houses and are not travelling much so the tour operators have to spend a lot of time doing research online.
– The tourism players also have to get in touch with their old clients through emails.
– The Government of Uganda should also vigorously market the industry through the private sector and Uganda Tourism Board (UTB) because the competition is going to become tougher because of America, intra-African competitions and Asian countries competing with us and more over they have better products.
– The tour operators or players should be ready to train and retool staff and let get rid of those who are not ready to adjust.
Stimulus package
The Government of Uganda should bring up a stimulus fund and give out some money to the tourism players in order to cushion them against the many unforeseen challenges and to prevent many players from collapsing since tourism contributes a big percentage of the GDP to the country.
