For the first time in the history of the travel industry, everything has come to a temporary halt globally. The pandemic has stopped all non-essential business and leisure travel.
While entertainment and retail can be consumed virtually, there is no online equivalent to travel yet. People have an innate need to travel and crave human connection. So, seeing the world come to a "ground stop" was an out of body experience for many in the industry.
Fortunately, there are some glimmers of hope emerging. We can already see travel coming back in some form and shape in certain parts of the world. In this evolving environment here are some key observations of where we are today:
Given the dynamic and unpredictable dance between supply and demand we are seeing today, traditional revenue management approaches that rely on historical data, established patterns, and inventory management tactics are no longer adequate.
To build a future-proof travel industry, companies need to evolve into revenue performance - a practice that incorporates just-in-time insights, real-time alerts, and future-looking micro as well as macro demand indicators where commercial outcomes are predetermined and are in the context of the market.
We strongly believe in the need to converge the fields of guest intelligence and revenue performance. Traditionally these have operated in parallel, coexisting but not meeting. When market demand is on a growth trajectory, there is an abundance of financial resources, talent and historical insights.
But that is not the case now. With markets restarting in some parts of the world, businesses need to re-establish the baseline and revalidate assumptions in both revenue performance and guest intelligence. By converging the insights from guest intelligence and revenue performance, we can accelerate recovery.
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