![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.globalflight.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/New-reality.png\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n30 March 2020<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Each crisis brings up a not so pleasant side effect: Self-proclaimed thought leaders trying to exploit the situation, looking more at their personal need to create new business than really keeping the wealth of the industry in mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Business\nworldwide is down for almost anybody in the travel chain. This is most obvious\nfor airlines and hotels, but it has much wider implications, reaching out to\nsuppliers, hotel investors or airplane manufacturers. And this results in\nplenty of \u00ab\u00a0spare time\u00a0\u00bb for many people in the industry, including\nnotably for consultants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is no\ndoubt that the industry needs to move forward and needs people pushing\ndevelopments at an intellectual level – but not each event is suitable to have\nthat potential for being a game changer. Remember when such presumed forward\nthinkers sold you the spin-off of FFPs or revenue-based schemes as solution to\nall your problems (because they had some hidden agenda in there)?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many people\nare drawing up these days the so-called new reality or new norm after Covid-19,\nthe implications on the travel industry in general and on loyalty programs in\nparticular. Yes, it is laudable to use the time locked in into your four walls\nfor some strategic thinking, but not necessarily everything resulting from that\nthinking is worth being elevated to the status of a new reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To make it\nsimple, the travel industry lives of business travellers and leisure\ntravellers, the latter distinguishable into holiday makers and VFR (visiting\nfriends and relatives) traffic. Personally, I don’t predict a long term change\nin behaviour for any of these main groups due to the current situation, except for\nan initial transition period, which might last some time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yes, most\npeople work from home these days and people predict that this will change the\nway companies view the need for business travel, with a potential negative\nimpact on the financial situation of the whole travel chain (incl. loyalty\nprograms) if this most lucrative target group reduces its travel activity and\nrelated spending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Working\nfrom home might indeed be technically feasible in virtually all parts of the\nworld thanks to the available technology – but concluding from that that we can\ndo without business travel might be a far stretch. Whether you measure it by\nGDP figures, stock exchange values or employees’ moral, there is not much that\nallows you right now really concluding that the economy is in a great shape and\nthat we can all live and prosper with this new norm of a travel-free\nenvironment. For corporate travel managers, there will even be more pressure on\nnot putting travellers in cramped Economy cabins (social distancing), resulting\npotentially in higher revenues for airlines. On the other side, much\n\u00ab\u00a0non-essential\u00a0\u00bb travel has already been reduced a long time ago as\npart of general cost reductions and more cost-conscious travel management\npolicies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the leisure level, being locked into your place for several weeks lets you just understand the value of freedom. Once it can be considered fairly safe, people will continue to want to travel and explore the world again, near and far. If you have family and friends far away, does that current forced separation give you rather more or less motivation to see each other? Skype is good, but will never replace real human interaction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And loyalty\nprograms will continue to play their psychological role in the decision process\nbetween different suppliers and, to a certain degree, even between travelling\nand not travelling. No virus as of yet has been invented that will change the fundamental\nneed of human beings to be rewarded and recognised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No doubt\nthat there are lessons learned from the current situation and that it will\nchange behaviour and reasoning in certain regards in the long term, e.g. with a\nneed to take more care of elderly clients (e.g. in form of a 50% discount for\nin-room service at hotels for senior guests). But all this will be a slow\nevolution and only time will tell whether Covid-19 was any catalysator to that\nor not. And loyalty programs will continue to evolve alongside such market\nevolutions and ask questions such as which currency to adopt – but they would be stupid not to exploit the natural potential\nthey have because their members are first of all simple human beings with a\nsimple psychological structure, which can easily be influenced by using the\nright mechanisms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, if you\nhear next time an expert predicting you the future of the loyalty industry (and\nit won’t be long!), sit back and smile. The fundamentals of the loyalty\nindustry are directly linked to the human psychology. It will take decades to\nchange that significantly, so don’t get fooled now in these extraordinary\ntimes. Focus on getting through the crisis<\/a> and focus on preparing for the time\nafter – but don’t cut off your feet by questioning the basics because you’d\nfind yourself in a serious competitive disadvantage afterwards. Others won’t\nlisten to such voices and they will be right not to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 30 March 2020 Each crisis brings up a not so pleasant side effect: Self-proclaimed thought leaders trying to exploit the situation, looking more at their personal need to create new business than really keeping the wealth of the industry in mind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalflight.net\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4914"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalflight.net\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalflight.net\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalflight.net\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalflight.net\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4914"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalflight.net\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4916,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalflight.net\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4914\/revisions\/4916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalflight.net\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalflight.net\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalflight.net\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}