Shape Shifters – Capacity and Adaptation for New Tourism By Sachin Bansal


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PUBLISHED June 11, 2020 | updated May 10, 2021 21:33

Prioritizing significantly is the new way to manage life and business. Tourism & hospitality with their sub sectors have to become intelligent activators between land, air and sea. There are several types of experiences that are being curated and content is digitally inspiring but in real sense the sector must drive sales during and after COVID-19 scenarios.  

The customer is fearful at both end by becoming a seeker and a purchaser. The brands have to let go using traditional thinking about competitive strategy. The definition of pandemic is being written through rule books, and these rules are like time bound disclaimers.  The readiness to trust the services, offerings and interactions is of utmost priority in hospitality and tourism related businesses. Let tours and activities take a back seat for the moment because of evolving rules of managing covid-19 strategies in market spaces. The acceptance of lockdown is through financial loss and does not bring any human connection. The portrayal is rendering weakness and hence, on ground its loss of jobs, increasing insecurity and fear of dwindling future-survival everywhere. Those who have enough are silent and those who do not are struggling to make ends meet. 

In the identified gap between the two wings of commerce and telecommunication services this is where the multi-fold opportunity exists. Those who do not have money have the competency and those who have money have assets to be serviced. Along with the rule books, to mitigate the threat of COVID-19 the human connection and trust is required to start afresh. Capacity building will be for attitude adaption with no errors and total quality management would be the core. The more automation we bring the more burdensome it will become for business, agriculture, education, social work.  Today we need people to feel comfortable with people and this is not easy. 

Tourism and hospitality are a people centric industry: a smile, gestures, soulful vibrations makes people across the globe comfortable. There are several types of experiences that come through visitation and interaction. More the exclusiveness more will be learning and new discoveries.   The rotation of staff welded with agreements will be a stiff model in new normal and the businesses have to become shape-shifters. Team structure will be important and every individual in a team has to adapt and be empowered. Designations and old-world hierarchy in the tourism and hospitality is respectable but rigid and new tourism will demand first-hand ways of working.   

As mentioned by (Gardner, 2017) the fact is, that “to alter our path we need to come face to face with some very uncomfortable issues, and so far, most prefer to advocate for the delusion of perpetual growth on a finite planet, while personally being convinced of a ‘technological cornucopia’”. 

With the focus of being shape-shifters under new circumstances, the vision of sustainability has to be in sync with technology and should provide benefits to local communities.  The realistic approach to planning and action will lead success for valuable resources towards aggregation, and eventually grow into a community of users. This is the time to encourage flexibility and innovation for customer acquisition and build service delivery capacity.

As we all begin again, time is opportune to become supreme in hospitality and tourism sub sectors, however, maintaining the leadership position will require alignment of moral growth. The consumption patterns are shifting so does the attitudes and in this shift the human workforce is critical. The companies of every size have to create an innovative response to environment and advantage comes from seizing momentary opportunities. Now, it is time to draw outside the box while accepting the changing times and customer value assessments. The industry leaders have to adapt and structure new roles and new relationships for themselves. The business has to be built upon core competency of exploration and by challenging the faded practices of completing the transactions. 

The continuous development of new knowledge is a requirement that cannot be full filled by mundane ideas; it will come from travel engagements with newer ideas. The ideas then need to be elevated through the visual engagement with a creative combination of hospitality services as part of product development.  The team members driving the business vision will experience the execution risk while implementing the business plan and will fail big if they are not confident on the originality of the product they sell. Comparing the teams strength with the perspective given by Daily et al. (1994) who has defined the goals for the optimal population size states that “Sufficient wealth, access to resources, universal humans rights, preservation of biodiversity and cultural diversity, and support for intellectual, artistic and technological creativity [for everyone].”

Today, it is all about making your business innovative and taking care of your people. At the same time, one should not invest energy in pursuing opportunities that are harder to win against established competitors. The rules set by organizations rejuvenate short term strategies and can get leveraged by unique resources which can bring behavioral changes leading to success. The value chain effectiveness using both internal and customer will drive the business.

It is time to craft few simple rules to guide people and map their resource advantages to raise critical questions for clients’ safe experiences. In post covid-19 let the organic growth become the new appraisal norm judged by resonating ‘experiential delivery outcome (REDO)™’. Being a shape-shifter is the best way to increase the chances to be part of vibrant future in new normal.  Catching up is not enough and it is time to realize tomorrow’s competitive advantages. 

About the author 

Dr. Sachin Bansal, is the Founder and Chief Explorer® of a national tourism award winning brand ‘India City Walks’. With two decades of experience, he has multiple flagships functional in the arena of community impact and destination product creation within the tourism industry. As a destination branding specialist, he has coined the conceptual acronym ‘Resonating Experiential Delivery Outcome (REDO)’ and offer tourism led solutions under the parent company City Explorers Private Limited. You can reach Dr. Sachin Bansal on help@cityexplorers.in. For trademark queries you may contact the author.

 

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