While India is combating the global pandemic within its border, the world is eyeing the country's potential to regain its market share to establish the powerhouse. India has subjugated the tourist outbound charts pre-pandemic, especially in the Asia Pacific region even if its pre-covid outbound digits straggled behind China.
With a major focus on domestic tourism, the Indian travel sector is working towards re-booting the industry while ensuring safety and hygiene measures at every point of destination. Worldwide, the tourism sector has been the worst hit from the coronavirus pandemic.
With the aim of restarting travel between countries, various governments have arranged for "air bubbles" to promote commercial travel. India is in bilateral agreements with countries such as the U.A.E, Qatar, Maldives France, and the United Kingdom to name a few. Short-haul destinations, which are robust and friendly with covid-19 policies and are willing to invite Indians, will be the first runners in the race to restart economic tourism activities from India.
Ankush Nijhawan, Co-Founder TBO Group, and MD Nijhawan Group said, "I strongly believe that Dubai and Maldives will lead the path for re-starting Indian outbound travel, especially with IPL posing as an enormous opportunity to pace tourism activities. This strategic move by U.A.E. has altered the whole sentiment towards outbound travel from India creating a positive mindset. East Africa, Bhutan, Sri Lanka along with destinations like Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan, will have a substantial advantage because of their proximity to India. Europe will still take some time to pick since the visa policies for the EU are stringent"
While elaborating on the challenges faced by the organization during these unprecedented times, the employer navigated through the various obstacles like the employees sent on unpaid leaves are now back at the workplace. In a recent release, the TBO group also announced the reversal of the salaries of their employees.
The tenacious restart of domestic activities is a cue for hope for the rebound of the sector. The demand for domestic travel is consistently increasing week by week especially for hotels based in sought-after destinations such as Lonavla, Goa, Alibag, Mussoorie, Shimla, and Rajasthan.
"The current challenge realized is the liquidity in the market. Our customers are travel agents who are further struggling to receive payments from the end traveler. Some of them are shrunk by size or are struggling with cash flow due to a lack of revenue. Banks haven't extended the moratorium post 28th September. Hence, we're being conservative while extending credit to our partners. But we are optimistic that by the end of Q4 we will see growth in the graph" he added.
From thinking about the next new normal to make it work, the world has seen it all in 2020. It is time to stop assuming that the old ways of accomplishing tasks will come back. The virus is here to co-exist. Acceleration towards best practices is the need of the hour. While the world has enthusiastically embraced digitalization and virtual reality to connect for virtual meetings and exhibitions, Ankush still believes that in this trade, a touch of personalization is a requisite.
