It’s Good to Connect with You—at least Virtually
As there is a great amount of information about the importance of communications, both internally and to industry partners, we believe that between now and June 30, the most productive strategy would be to begin working on the recovery plan. That’s why we created this cover-all-ground industry special. The goal is to help as many people as possible by being a resource to others and preparing new product for the recovery.
You’ll find links packed with ways to engage your staff—from developing accessible product and marketing in lean times to being a positive resource for your community. There’s a lot that can be done—even when living in cockroach mode. Our resources will be updated as new information and ideas are surfacing daily. Stay safe—and we hope to see you in the not too distant future.
—Jake Steinman, Founder and CEO, TravelAbility Summit
START HERE: Prep for Recovery Phase With These 4 Basic Rules
It’s tough to develop something new when every day your brain is busy mentally re-arranging the furniture. Stick to these four principles:
- Use the opportunity to take a leadership role by becoming proactively positive with stakeholders.
- Be forthright internally and externally as you build credibility within the community about the status of hotels, restaurants, attractions, and museums.
- Share positivity whenever possible and double down on social media activity as a way to communicate with your network.
- And most importantly: Find Your niche and brainstorm ideas for the recovery.
Now, here’s the plan.
Find Your Niche and Fill A Need
The demographic that should be given top consideration is the 75 million baby boomers who account for 70% of all the discretionary spending in the US and stand to inherit $13 trillion (pre-COVID- 19) globally from their parents. They have the money and time to become a tourist and perceive travel as an aspirational right that is an essential part of life.
Consider Accessibility. Team TravelAbility has spent the past two years exploring ways in which destinations can help their partners become accessible for not only the growing number of disabled visitors but also the 26% of locals who, according to statistics from the Center of Disease Control (scroll down our homepage to see the CDC infographic ), have a family member living with disability and will be first thinking about a “Staycation” or regional travel once people are freed from self-quarantining.
Research Niches That Work for Your Destination. By brainstorming now, you’ll be ahead of the curve once the turnaround point is finally in sight. Then you can start packaging and promote new product via inexpensive social media channels in highly targeted ways. Packages can be created for:
- LGTBQ market: upmarket, 63% are starting families/have children
- Multi-Generational Family Travel: Grandparent funded
- African America Market travel: See types of travel products here.
- Grandparent/Grandchildren Travel: Parents need to get back to work
- Girlfriend getaways (spas, museums, live performances, dining)
- Accessible Travel: an untapped but exponentially growing market
Use Downtime to Create Future Accessible Product
It’s not going to be business as usual for weeks—maybe months. Use the downtime for product development that will help you in the recovery.
Hire interns or re-deploy existing staff who are forced to become idle due to the crisis to research and identify accessibility features (by phone, email or web searches) offered by your hotels, attractions, museums, zoos, outdoor/nature, and restaurants in your destinations that can be simply developed into a landing page.
In our opinion, Visit Indianapolis has built the most advanced accessibility section on their website as it not only includes a wide variety of attractions and museums but also experiences and authentic first-person stories from visitors who are disabled. Also, most of the referral links are deep linked directly to each partner’s accessibility page. Additionally, the universal wheelchair icon prominently displayed on the upper right-hand corner of the website opens directly to the accessibility landing page for a better user experience.
Help your hotel partners reduce the likelihood of ADA litigation. The TravelAbility team has been working on a prototype Accessibility FAQ landing page with Holiday Inn in Santa Maria, California, which is part of the Point Hospitality Group which attended last year’s Summit. The landing page, as well as the accessible image gallery, can be seen here. All images were taken by internal hotel staff with an iPhone.
Step Up and Help Community with Innovative Ideas
From take-out to transportation, start thinking like a local. You will build relationships for the future and promote safety so we can FLATTEN THAT CURVE.
Take On ‘Take Out‘ Visit Stockton has stocked their “Dine Stockton” page with discounts from local dining partners offering takeout meals to help keep locals sane and restaurants alive. Visit Buffalo has built Keep Buffalo Fed, a local directory of restaurants offering curbside takeout.
Promote ‘safer than the subway’ options: NY Bike Rental Firm Unlimited Biking will match the cost of public transportation for long-term rentals across their New York, San Francisco, and Washington DC locations. For example, for New Yorkers who need to get to work, but want to avoid public transportation but need a workout while their health club is closed, Unlimited Biking has tied bike rental rates to the same weekly and monthly cost of a Metro Card.
Find Creative Approaches to Marketing
- Las Vegas tourism Hit the jackpot with this video. Finding the right tone to settle the nerves of the 42.5 million visitors who come for entertainment and recreation every year isn’t easy, but they may have found the way with this video.
- Hilton Is Using VR to boost corporate empathy for housekeeping staff. Hilton’s use of Virtual Reality to build an understanding of what their housekeepers have to endure is an industry first. Read more.
- Frontier Airlines Introduces Students Fly Free promotion. It’s a clever come on but there is a string attached. Read more.
Take Action and Spread Positivity
Getting hit with a relentless stream of bad news can zap the energy out of any organization. Put there are people out there pulling it off. Here, ideas from aquariums, distilleries and walking tours. Plus, a 7-point plan to help your staff to embrace positivity, courtesy of Visit Anaheim.
- Keep your sense of humor and adventure. In this example, Shedd Aquarium had the last laugh. They may have had to close to the public, but they made the best of it, letting their penguins out to browse the exhibits and capturing their antics on video. See it here.
- Don’t get tapped out. Local distillers in several states and are switching over to making hand sanitizers. You can read about this creative switch-over here.
- Keep on walking. A small walking tour company owner in Italy wrote in a recent blogpost in Arival.com “We want to be optimistic, and we are already thinking toward 2021.” Among tourism industry suppliers, walking tours are a difficult way to make a living in the best of times, but this plucky entrepreneur is innovating her way through the crisis. Read more.
- Let experience guide you. Experts who rebounded from similar financial freefalls (9/11 and the 2009 Global Financial Crisis) and came out the other side offer their advice on how attractions and experience providers can survive Covid-19. Read more.
Steal These Ideas! Anaheim’s 7-Point Plan for Conquering Covid-19 Chaos As Charles Harris, chief marketing officer for Visit Anaheim wrote: “The travel and tourism industry will certainly recover from this. We have a role to play in that recovery, now and later.” Here is his seven-point plan to help their industry through Covid-19 (previously published on LinkedIn):
- Be visible and accessible to community stakeholders who are clearly struggling. Show up for them on tough days and be a resource.
- Stay aware of key issues including industry-related news, budget commitments and external messaging.
- Be transparent and inform audiences, including staff, customers, the board of directors and partners the latest news. Deliver information in a timely manner.
- Answer media calls, especially on rough days. If you want media to receive your calls and act on your pitches, then you have to be there for the tough days. No excuses.
- Create a custom email list for regional DMO marketing and CEO leaders to exchange information and best practices.
- Devise an opt-in email list for all partners and key stakeholders in Anaheim and Garden Grove. The goal is to deliver positive daily news of what is happening in the destination and the industry for Partners.
- Test a work from home program and move the entire team to a remote working platform for the next two weeks.
We’re here and ready to be a resource. If you have any questions, please send them our way in an email or Tweet.