Are there habits, customs, ideas or practices in the travel industry that should be reassessed or retired?
Dale: We need to be sensitive to the environment and the number of visitors that we bring into highly popular destinations of the world. If we’re dropping thousands of people into a venue that can’t support that volume, we’re doing a disservice to our customers and to the destination.
Cuba is a prime example: As we make progress to normalize travel there, I hope it’s a case study into how to open up a destination and manage it accordingly so that we don’t do harm to it. I met their minister of tourism last year, and he told me that their phones have been lighting up with tour operators from around the world saying, “We’ve got to get there before the Americans come and destroy it.” As an industry, we have to be so careful about that.
Assante: What concerns me for the future a little bit is the pricing and business models of some of the tourism industry being based on commissions paid by suppliers. Many are reducing their commissions or rates based on volume, and the airlines don’t want to pay commissions at all any more. So maybe there’s a different business model we have to think about for tour operators in the future.
Pantuso: We’re seeing a tremendous amount of travel on scheduled buses, whether it’s Greyhound or Trailways. We’re starting to see tour operators, especially in the major metropolitan areas, using scheduled departures on some of their tours. I’ve heard of several operators in the New York area doing international inbound travel that utilizes Megabus or BoltBus. If your tour is somewhat independent, you can take a scheduled service instead of chartering a bus.
Inman: Today, we can connect immediately via email, Facebook, Google Chat, all of that. But sometimes these days, we forget to just pick up the phone and have a conversation, or to have an in-person meeting. At our Travel Exchange, we actually see the people connect. Some of the relationships are decades old. But I’ve only been on board for 10 months now, and more and more, I’m seeing that our business is built on relationships.
What innovation have you seen in outside industries that tourism should adopt or learn from?
Assante: I’m a huge proponent of continuous adult learning. In tourism, I see not so much a focus on continuing education, but [on] having tourism professionals take continuing education in a broad range of subjects so that we’re all more entrepreneurial and can use more research and data to make good decisions. That’s what I see in the business community. I’ve just taken a couple of weeklong classes that have shown me how important it is to bring in data and make decisions and to not just guess or rely on habits. More industries are using research and data to make decisions.
Pantuso: In the last 10 years, Wi-Fi has become a regular add-on product. It came from outside the motorcoach industry because people have used it in their daily lives. Now, almost every coach company I talk to offers Wi-Fi or is looking into how to do it.
Inman: Jay Smith, one of our officers, told me about an ad he saw that said, “An educated customer is our best customer.” You can relate that to our customers. We want to reach the traveling public, so we professionals have to stay on top of the issues and options and take time to understand both sides of the tour product. We know that our customers are going to be more educated because of the Internet, so we need to be more educated, too.
You might compare it to the food industry. Years ago, you could go to a restaurant and order something they had on the menu. But now, more and more, you can customize whatever you want and have a series of options for what you want to order. Tour operators need to give customers these kinds of options as well as the freedom to explore them. That also applies to the DMOs.
Dale: One area that is constantly coming up with new concepts that boggle my mind is the health-and-wellness industry. Here in New York City, you can’t open the newspaper or turn on the TV without hearing about some type of new way to keep the body and the mind healthy. They come up with new ways in which you can stretch and relax and keep yourself healthy. I always marvel at how they come up with these ideas. They continue to reinvent themselves.
I know many of our destinations and tour operator members take pride in reinventing themselves. We need to continue to push ourselves to think outside of the box. And many of our members are integrating health and wellness into their packaged travel. Yoga is a part of many programs out there today, as well as sustainable food and farm-to-table dining.
