Travel is the food for soul, they say. But our souls have been hungry ever since the pandemic hit the world. With countries imposing restrictions on domestic and international travel during the lockdown period and beyond, the industry is among the worst hit sectors today.
To understand what the future of travel industry might look like in the year 2021 and beyond, we got travel business industry experts on our latest edition of e-mojoMeets.
Panellists for e-mojoMeets #1:
- Rashmi Chadha – Founder, wovoyage
- Ravneet Bhalla – Co-founder, Towno
- Suhas Chatkara & Surabhi Subramonia – Co-founders, Routed India Travels
What is e-mojoMeets?
mojoMeets is our initiative to give entrepreneurs an opportunity to network, collaborate, share ideas and discuss various topics that focus on scaling small and startup businesses. Just like travel and other businesses around the globe, we decided to take the event online, hence, e-mojoMeets.
We envision e-mojoMeets as a series of sessions and discussion with experts from a dedicated industry, open to all entrepreneurs and SME owners, hosted on our Facebook Instamojo community – Indian MSMEs Network.
Challenges overcome by travel business industry in 2020
First edition of e-mojomeets started with how the travel business industry overcame the challenges posed by COVID-19 to stay afloat.
The World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) 2020 reported that in the year 2019, tourism generated 39,821 million jobs in India, which is 8% of total employment in the year 2019. But COVID-19 put a pause to the boom!
“The time between March to October was a great time for businesses in travel industry to get acquainted with legalities and also inform their customers about health and safety requirements.” -Suhas Chatkara, Co-founder, Routed India Travels
“Keeping the team motivated was the hardest thing to do during the pandemic when people just stopped travelling” – Ravneet Bhalla, co-founder Towno.
— instamojo (@instamojo) February 4, 2021
Some challenges faced by travel business industry:
- Managing the team, and to let them go, due to a low in business
- Customers asking for refunds in the face of their travel plans getting hit
- Helping local and domestic tourism sustain themselves
- Keeping the team motivated in a turbulent period when sales and revenue drastically dropped
How the industry overcame these challenges:
- Optimising digital media marketing: Travel firms took a step back and decided to utilise this lean period to connect with their audience and build a stronger feeling of community.
- Innovation: Travel firms came up with new ideas like ‘Bucket List by Towno’ to keep up the travellers’ enthusiasm
- Collaborations: Travel firms collaborated with local and domestic firms in a bid to be prepared for post-COVID travel
- Educating audience: Travel firms also decided to educate the audience with the best practices to be followed by travellers if they are travelling during COVID-19.
“During COVID we started online collaborations with different travel startups and managed to grow our Instagram followers to 95.8K which gave us a great brand presence” – Rashmi Chadha, founder @wovoyage
— instamojo (@instamojo) February 4, 2021
Also read: How Travel Startups Should Bounce Back Post COVID – Tips and Examples
Trends that will impact travel business industry in 2021 & beyond
The panellists also threw light on the trends that will govern the travel business industry his year and beyond. For all we know, we might be looking at a complete change in the way travel industry operates. Some key takeaways were:
- Sustainable travel to pick up
- Slow travel will become a trend
- Drivable trips has already become a trend and will continue to grow
- Domestic/local tourism will be a big hit with Indian travellers
- Workations (work+vacations) will be a trend among young travellers, giving boost to local travel, yet again
“Revenge tourism has become a thing. People want to go out more now because they’re bored stuck at home. As long as one travels responsibly, you can travel as much as you want.” – Raveneet Bhalla, co-founder of Towno.
— instamojo (@instamojo) February 4, 2021
With insight from industry experts, coupled with research from industry leaders, we have compiled a ‘Travel Trends Report 2021’ , with actionables on how to use these trends to grow your travel business.
DOWNLOAD TRAVEL TRENDS 2021 EBOOK
Travel business industry is bound to bounce back. People will continue to travel and travel businesses will have to adapt as per the changing trends.
From challenges faced during COVID-19, to how to overcome them, to the trends that will govern the coming days of travel business industry, first edition of online mojoMeets was a success.
If you own or want to start a travel business, you can setup your online store and also start collecting payments on Instamojo.
ALSO READ: How to Choose a Payment Gateway for Travel Businesses
To be a part of upcoming mojoMeets, join our online business community on Facebook, WhatsApp and Telegram, and subscribe to the community newsletter to stay updated with the latest events and discussions hosted on our community.
