Sounding Off: Let’s not waste the lessons of COVID

Each Friday, PhocusWire dissects and debates an industry trend or new development covered by PhocusWire that week.

The past 18 months have been brutal in so many ways.

More than four million people have died from COVID-19.

The crisis has triggered a global recession, the deepest since the end of World War II according to the Brookings Institution, with the downturn most pronounced in the poorest parts of the world.

And specifically in travel and tourism, COVID-19 and related restrictions led to losses of nearly $4.5 trillion and 62 million jobs. 

Certainly the pandemic has affected many of us deeply and personally – whether because of the virus itself, its impact on friends and family, changes to our personal and professional routines and the profound emotional and psychological toll of more than a year and a half of stress, uncertainty, loneliness and reflection. 

But there are signs that as the world emerges from the darkness of this crisis, there is an opportunity for us to rise up with more resilience – and more humanity. 

While yes, there have been differences and disputes regarding how to respond to the pandemic, in ways never before seen, the world has been united in the last 18 months as it fights this invisible enemy. 

In many ways it has exposed the truth behind the words of poet Maya Angelou, “We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.”

As Mandich points out, travel has the ability the to “open minds and drive better understanding,” and this crisis does as well.

Let’s not waste this lesson. 

Whether through mentorship roles as Mandich advocates or less formal interactions with colleagues and friends, each of us can try to move forward with more compassion and kindness and a spirit of collaboration.

Beyond personal relationships, we have already seen many examples of partnerships across travel such as competitors Airbnb and Vrbo developing a joint “Community Integrity Program” to address safety issues and Google working with organizations including the United Nations World Tourism Organization, Destinations International and HSMAI to share tips on using search data to drive the recovery. 

And we see evidence of this in the work being done around sustainability, as governments, non-governmental organizations and the private sector are coming together to create solutions that help the travel industry come back smarter than before. 

So in our eagerness to recover, to rebuild, to return to “normal,” let us not be too eager to bury the lessons of this crisis but instead let’s use them as the foundation for a more humane future.