Richard Turen
This has been a time when many of us in our industry are trying to reinvent ourselves. Travel agents want to -- need to -- become sleeker and more inventive as they react to changing consumer behavior and the lessons learned by so many homebound professionals who have had to say goodbye to face-to-face client meetings.
Yes, there is Zoom, but most industry veterans will tell you that it just isn't the same as being seated in the office with a client.
The pandemic has taught us many things. And many of those lessons have come courtesy of the food industry.
When I look for travel trends, I find it valuable to look first at changes occurring among restaurants. Like our business, the restaurant industry has many price points and a large and diverse number of offerings.
And restaurants, even the fast-food variety, learned early on the importance of specialization. A restaurant that advertises "food" would likely not do well. Similarly, offering simply to arrange "travel" is not going to generate as much business as displaying expertise in a subset of travel.
But even despite specialization among restaurants, the industry has been decimated. One leading restaurant analyst has estimated that 82% of the restaurants that have closed in New York will never reopen.
Well-known restaurant chains have started using so-called ghost kitchens, where meals for several restaurants are actually prepared off-premises using less expensive, shared facilities.
The ghost kitchen concept has parallels in travel among agencies that share resources, and we may see that expand further to reduce duplication of efforts, lower costs and increase efficiency.
But restaurants have something new to overcome. The Cleveland Clinic came out with a report that showed 62% of us, currently under home incarceration, have started important new hobbies. Cooking is one of the most popular, and home cooks are really enjoying their newfound skills, to the detriment of nearby restaurants.
But empty tables are somewhat balanced by those who find ways to bring food into their customer's homes.
Not all food lends itself to delivery. During the last quarter, Papa John's and Domino's pizza saw extremely healthy per-store growth while Starbucks did not. Apparently, no one wants Starbucks home delivery.
The pandemic has taught us several lessons about delivery. We have learned, for example, that when we order things online, there are many sources we might prefer over Amazon. But to get our business away from Amazon, its competitors have come to understand that simply offering to deliver is not enough. Speed of delivery is, increasingly, an important factor.
In fact, speed in all aspects of operations are increasingly coming to the fore. Fast food is becoming faster food. Burger King has a new store prototype with three drive-thru lanes: two for ordering and pick-up and one for those who order ahead online and expect that their food will be ready at the moment they arrive.
In a way, I think that the new "need for speed of delivery" may play a role in the delivery of travel services. Our clients have had lots of time to learn how to navigate online travel searches. There must certainly be millions of travel consumers who have been working on their skill set in this area. I wonder what effect this will have when we are all ready to do "business as usual."