There were more than 400 registrants for the recent Connect Travel virtual roundtable— “Re-Connect” with industry leaders to hear how events will evolve moving forward—and the count continued to grow even as the discussion began. Those who attended were among the first to learn that the U.S. Travel Association announced that it will coordinate with the Connect Travel to co-locate several events around IPW 2021, which is slated to take place on Sept. 18-22 in Las Vegas. (The full story is located elsewhere in this issue of INBOUND.)

Discussing the US Travel and Connect Travel move, as well as a number of other topics, were: Carylann Assante, CEO, Student & Youth Travel Association; Peter J. Pantuso, president & CEO, American Bus Association; Will Seccombe, president & CEO, Connect Travel; and Malcolm Smith, senior vice president business development & IPW general manager, U.S. Travel Association.

Moderator for the session was Shari Bailey, vice president, Connect Travel, and general manager, Connect Travel Events. (Photo)

Key Takeaways

1. A virtual component was a huge part of the way business was conducted in 2020. Every major conference, at some point, had a virtual component.

2. “Virtual” will continue to be with us in the near-term. However, it will be adapted to new realities, such as health and safety protocols that are likely to be changed from time to time.

3. Because virtual events have proved to attract and warrant attention from professionals across a wide swath of the travel and tourism industry, Connect Travel will be conducting weekly virtual round table discusses “for as long as we need to be connected.”

4. With most business and organizations operating on greatly reduced budgets and less income, meeting and event planners are finding creative ways to enable more people to attend face-to-face events.

5. Look for all major travel and tourism industry events to increase the educational components—both virtual and onsite—at their trade shows as they seek for ways to add value to their attendance and participation.

6. At meetings and conferences in the future, look for hosts and organizers to a far greater number of contact-less features and services—box lunches in place of buffet lines, etc.

Selected Quotes

Shari Bailey: “Is virtual something that goes away in 2021 or 2022? Or is it a hybrid model that something that is here to stay forever?”  

Malcolm Smith: “Virtual is with us for a while. It’s going to be part of 2021. It’s going to be dialed up at times. It’s going to be dialed down—depending on audience, time of year, and so forth.”

Peter Pantuso: “Virtual is always going to be there. It’s not going away. It’s going to change how we do business going forward. We had our show (ABA Maketplace) in January. That was before COVID came or anybody knew about it. But, since that time, we’ve done over a hundred webinars as a way to engage with all of our members. Next year, we will have a virtual component that leads into the in-person component in June … it’s always going to be part of what we do going forward.”

Carylann Assante: “You can now extend your conference with (additional) opportunities and not worry about paying lots of fees for speakers on site. I like to think of it as, maybe, a silver lining in the form of things that we never did before that add value.”

Will Seccombe: “In terms of content, no one is no longer limited to two or three days on site. Really, what we’re seeing in these pandemic times is that the marketplace is changing so fast. … I think what we’re going to see, industry-wide—in the travel industry and in many other industries—is that ongoing education is going to be more and more important.”

Malcolm Smith: “I think a challenge going into 2021 for all of us who are doing anything—virtual webinars and so forth—is the challenge to keep people engaged because there is fatigue with Zoom calls and virtual conferences. So, how do you keep the person engaged?”

Peter Pantuso: “You’ve got to keep it (marketing) going. I know that some companies don’t that; it’s one of the first things they cut. People need to be prepared for recovery and we’re all in the business— especially in the group travel business that we’re all part of—of planning long term. That planning process has already started. I can tell you: some of our larger tour operators are putting out their catalogs and they’re doing sales for 2022. if you’re not in the game, if you’re not selling and marketing right now, regardless—I understand budgets are tight, but if you’re not in that space you’re already done for 2022, let alone 2021.

Malcolm: Smith: “We’re in such an unusual time that we are in the depth of a crisis that we know it’s going to get worse in the next few months—but we’ve never been in a position where we know, as we do now, that there is a big rebound coming and we can almost pinpoint the date of it. it’s basically starting the second quarter of 2021 and starting to roar in third and fourth quarter of 21.

Will Seccombe: “There are consumer behaviors that will be with us forever that have changed as a result of COVID-19. Our personal comfort zones and our personal space has widely expanded. There are things that we are going to have to do, even if we have a vaccine. People are going to be more cautious. Our opportunity as leaders in the travel industry to demonstrate as much as possible that you can travel safely, that you can show people you can meet safely and that you can still have extraordinary experiences.”

Carylann Assante: “I’m wondering, when we finally get face-to-face, if no one’s going to want to go into to go into an education room because they haven’t seen any body for so long.

The discussion at last week’s “Connect with Tour Operators” virtual roundtable focused very much on when the travel and tourism industry in the United States might restart in 2021. Sponsored by Connect Travel, the roundtable also spent time during which participants paid attention to the importance of

international visitors to the United States. The three panelists who took part in the event included: Umang Malbari, president, Discover Destinations; Chris Pilley, CEO, Rocky Mountain Holiday Tours, LLC; and Jeremy Butzlaff, President, MTRWestern. Moderating the panel discussion was Shari Bailey, vice president of Connect Travel, and general manager, Connect Travel Events

Key Takeaways from the Roundtable

1.There is a “pent-up demand” for travel among clients of the operators. Both U.S. residents and international visitors, especially those from Europe, who are accustomed to taking two or three holidays every year, can’t wait to “break loose.” Along with the pent-up demand, there is a level of frustration among potential travelers, many of whom are experience some degree of a lockdown in their home countries.

2. With a possible vaccine that could put an end to the COVID-19 virus and the global pandemic that it caused notwithstanding, it appears that an impact on tourism won’t be immediate. Operators expect/hope that barriers to travel and travel-related activity to ease, and travel to re-start by the third or fourth quarter of 2021, with some product possibly launching in the second quarter; this depends on the lifting of travel bans.

3. Out of necessity, some operators began selling domestic product as the global pandemic continued in 2020. However, none expected domestic travel to comprise a significant share of their inventory. Yet, those operators who have taken to packaging and selling small, private tours, might maintain these items in their product line.

4. Nothing has warranted the attention of operators as much as the issue of safety and cleanliness. For the operators in this roundtable, the importance of these two features—safety and cleanliness—is high on, if not the top of, concerns of international travelers. Operators now include scrupulous attention to clean and safe practices in their own workplaces and among their employees; in the buses they use and the drivers and the tour guides who escort travelers; in the hotels they contract to use; and among the attractions, restaurants and activities that are a part of tours.

5. Related to the challenge of addressing safety and cleanliness concerns for operators is the frustration they all expressed over have over the absence of a single source of information on the various (and changing) regulations and different levels of requirements imposed on clients as they and the buses that carry them go through one destination after another. DMOs could be helpful, operators suggested, if they could help coordinate the information flow so that operators can more easily adhere the different regulations and requirements they find as they go from town to town and from hotel to hotel.

Selected Quotes

Chris Pilley: “It’s been a bit challenging here. But I think we’ll see a lot of pent-up demand. It might not be all there in 2021, but over the next few years there’s gonna be demand coming back.”

Jeremy Butzlaff: “For 2021 we’re looking at 25 percent of our 2019 capacity. So, it was basically going from 1.1 to 1.2 million to 300 000. That’s better than what we had in 2020, which was zero or, maybe, I think it was like 16 people … but people are anxious. They want to book. They want to go.”

Umang Malbari: “I think it’s a spring waiting to explode. People are ready to travel and I think the they want to travel. It’s there. There are just a lot of unknowns.”

Chris Pilley: “Right now our strongest market for 2021, by far, is the UK. But we’re still getting bookings from Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands and Italy—pretty much all of our main markets over there. It’s just not a normal volume, and yeah I think there’s just too much uncertainty.”

Umang Malbari: (Asked “Have you made decision to focus on the domestic market?) Yes and no. Domestic ball game’s a completely different ball game all together and our focus has always been more of the group side of travel. Even domestically, group travel is really not happening to the same degree as it was in 2019.”

Jeremy Butzlaff: “We spent a lot of the last eight nine months just foundationally (working on safety) What does that look like? How do we do it always as a carrier? It always starts with safety. For us, it was revamping how we train the drivers and how we get all the equipment done and maintained. And then there’s the internal safety of protecting people from COVID. How do we do that with electrostatic sprayers. And what’s our policy in the office?”

Chris Pilley: “We ended up getting some domestic bookings and that might continue some into

the future but that will be a small part of our business you know right now our focus has been

um one of the big changes is trying to get every activity company um get rates from them or we can do private tours.”

Umang Malbari: “Pretty much everybody in the travel industry right now is trying to revamp. And they’ve got a lot of extra time, so they’re all trying to develop new products. I think everyone is kind of asking ‘What else can we do rather than the major cities?’”

Chris Pilley: “Right now. I think the big enticement is allowing last-minute cancellations. They can get the thing at the cheapest price but if there’s a non-refundable 50 percent fee, they’re just not going to book it because they don’t know what’s going to come up in the next six eight to months.”

Umang Malbari: “It’s going to be really important for DMOs to continue marketing in these (overseas) destinations because we’re competing as the United States. We’re competing against the world um and for us to pull out of those destinations is going to be it’s going to be even harder to climb back out of it.”

Click here to list to/watch the video recording of the webinar.

We want you to know unequivocally that your health and wellness are of the utmost importance to our team.

We are 100% going forward with eTourism Summit, RTO Summit South, THRIVE Summit and TOUR. Our event plan was recently approved by Loews Royal Pacific Resort at Universal Orlando^TM and the schedule has been created to comply with all Florida regulations. 

The hotel is ready. We’re ready. The industry is ready.

Here is a high-level overview of the more-detailed Safe + Clean Connect plan:

• Temperature check points will be frequent.
• Masks will be required and provided.
• Meals will be boxed.
• Hand sanitizers and alcohol wipes will be distributed and widely available.
• Trade show aisles will be noticeably wider.
• Many vendors will be onsite demonstrating cutting-edge and practical event elements to help stop the spread of COVID-19.
• We will be utilizing indoor/outdoor venues throughout the programming.

We know there is no way to 100% protect everyone from COVID-19. Although we cannot remove all risk, we are doing everything in our power to mitigate it to minimal levels. Several large events have commenced in the last few weeks and we have reported on them to show you that this can be done and we can meet safely again. Please read that article here. It’s time to get our industry, which has been hit so hard, back on track again.

For questions, email Becca Smith at bsmith@connecttravel.com.