In the $1.4 trillion global travel industry, there are a lot of people whose job includes encouraging people to travel. I heard directly from a few of these industry colleagues after my post last Monday urging travel leaders to stop painting those who choose to cancel trips due to COVID-19 as fearful or irrational. The below message, shared anonymously by an industry veteran, stood out. I think the tide has turned on how people see the situation, but still think it is important to share.
I hope to see travel leaders show more leadership this coming week. And when this is all over, I hope that they examine critically how they responded as early developments unfolded. Travel is confronting major and lasting economic hits from this crisis, but we also have a duty to the millions of people who fly, cruise and book lodging every year. Flight attendants and front-line hospitality workers don’t forget this. We shouldn’t either.
Open Letter to Travel and Tourism Leaders
Over the past few weeks, an ugly side of the travel & tourism industry has emerged. Whether the motivation is greed and self-preservation, or (let’s hope) a concern for employees who rely on travel to support themselves and their families, too many industry leaders have put their business interests ahead of their communities and society at large by trying to say it's ok to get on planes, you just need a tutorial on aggressive hand washing and some antibacterial gel.
Traveling is the wrong thing to do right now, and anyone who denies that is doing harm.
Every person has the moral obligation to slow the spread as much as possible, buying time for the health care system to get prepared and deliver treatment to the thousands, maybe millions of people who will get sick in the coming months. It is not exaggeration, it is not fake news, it is cold, hard truth that hospitals in the United States do not have the capacity to treat the number of patients who will get sick if everyone does not change their behavior immediately. No doctor should be forced to choose which patient cannot get treatment due to lack of resources. If that nightmare becomes a reality, it is because everyone refused to act in time, as has been the tragic case in Italy.
Instead of painting pragmatism as paranoia, what travel industry leaders should be doing is getting organized to determine what their companies and employees need to survive the crisis and work with local, state and federal officials to get that relief. They should be thinking through the implications of how the industry will emerge from this and how they need to change their strategies to adapt to what will be a shaken consumer mindset. It is indeed not a time to get emotional and irrational, it is time to lead.
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