How the tourism industry can recover post pandemic | FT

welcome to this panel on the future of tourism i think it's safe to say that the pandemic has pummeled global travel all of us on this panel probably would have been in the same room for it not being that we're in uh a situation that's shut down flights for most of the world so the question is what are going to be the long-term implications for these changes in europe alone one of the biggest markets spending was down 64 in 2020 compared to the previous year but as vaccinations rise in many countries there is some sense that the situation could improve with the discussion of vaccination passports and some easing of travel in some countries so what does the future of travel look like post-pandemic jane uh let me start with you because of course in china things are much more open than in many other parts of the world um can you give us a sense of what things were like once restrictions were eased there and travel resumed what did it look like sure thanks for having me we just had a very good holiday for the labor day holiday and the government just published their number compared to pre-kobit 2019 head counts for travelers already exceeded 100 i think it's about 103 percent fully recovered from a pre-con pandemic level and for our company that number is even higher uh for air ticket uh we grow more than 20 percent compared to 2019 pre-corporate level for hotel it's even higher during the five-day uh weekend uh close to the 50 percent year-over-year growth uh for rental car it's 300 percent a year over your growth uh so we have seen a very strong rebound uh from the pre-coped level which we're very excited about so the numbers have got better were there changes in the type of travel that was done were were were travelers were there specific sectors that were more successful than others was the way people were traveling different than it was before the pandemic yes uh there are a couple of trends we have observed first of all people are paying a lot of attention to safety uh so we facilitate the infrastructure uh so hotelers as well as the air ticket uh issuers and also local tool operators can offer a safety network they join us for the style for the safety alliance so customers are offered hand sanitizers masks etc secondly customers prefer to travel within much smaller groups rather than a big bus with 50 people so we innovated small tools customize the tools where people can travel with their close family members as well as their close friends and thirdly customers are much much prefer to use flexible packages such as a free cancellation free changeable tickets uh hotel reservation etc so we work with our industry partners to make sure they offer more flexible packages to suit customers needs in this new environment and finally before i go to johan just in terms of if more flexibility did that mean higher costs higher packages people were spending more for their travel than they were in the past um because the market is still in the climbing mode uh so the whole industry are very uh positive uh they are willing to offer these flexible packages to stimulate the market so people are very open-minded when they're traveling uh i remember that last year when travel started to climb up some of the airlines offer ten dollars from beijing to shanghai uh to fly just to make sure people are willing to try it out and once the loading data is up then the price will climb up gradually uh so i think uh so far uh the volume have recovered very nicely and the next step is for the adrs to recover very nicely as a follow-up step joanne let me come to you so europe is obviously uh seems to be opening up or giving signs that they are the uk is talking about uh allowing travel between certain countries we have a big article today in the ft on how southern european countries tourism hotspots such as spain greece italy are changing a little bit how they operate in order to try to attract uh some of those tourists back give us a sense of that you as someone who's running an airline and also someone in europe how do you see i guess the return to travel uh shaping up over the next few months well i i think it's a it's a it's a good question and and you you can tell by jane's answers well you see now that there are regions and parts of the world where where you know that has actually already moved into a growth phase i always saw that this was a situation where you had a survival phase for the industry there's a recovery phase and then ultimately because the underlying demand of what we all do is so strong is going to head you into growth phase but but europe at this moment in time is quite a place of divergence because of the different restrictions that the government has has imposed you'll see as you mentioned that you have the the european commission now has recommended to the member states that they should for instance allow travel to take place without any restrictions at all if you can show that you are vaccinated now that's not at this moment in time reciprocated by the uk as an example and the way you have to prove also these things is also different from country to country so i think that there will be a divergence now for the next two three months on how how countries are really adapting according to the face that they are all in but but your point is well made you know particularly countries around the mediterranean who are now just craving for tourists you know to come to the destinations as well is going to do absolutely everything they can to open up for the travel and at the same time you have an overabundance of cautions i would say in the uk that you know still this is illegal to travel unless you are exempt for for for reasons you know so there's a lot of things that need to come into place here in order for us to have a strong summary but i still believe we will have so but there's a number of things that needs to happen here in the next couple of weeks to make sure that customers has the confidence to book and make the arrangements for the summer so let's break that down in a couple of ways i think you touch on some really interesting issues there let's talk first i guess about about the uk because as you said there's a slightly different set of arrangements there versus the rest of the continent but of course that's a very important source of income uh you know travelers going from the uk to europe do you think many parts of europe will still be on the green list uh going forward in the next few days and weeks are you confident that that will still happen well i mean that that's that's a key question you're raising just there i mean the government are are you know due to you know very imminently now produce the the the categorization and i hear that could already happen tomorrow where they're gonna then decide what country is going to go into the green list and the reports are are saying that there will be only a handful to do so and and if that is the case they're not following their own advice their own advice has been to opening up in a safe way based on data available and the data scientifically proven model robust analysis shows that you could basically put much of europe onto the green list as of today without having any you know significant impact on the hospitalization rate in in in the uk to protect protect the health care system so i mean i i'm afraid that it might be the case that it will be a smaller number of countries that will be on that green list and then that will be the increase but mind you here's what's going to happen you know while this is potentially then happened being announced here you know in the next couple of days you know the remainder of europe is going to open up which means that it's going to you know be very odd and ironic that actually uk who's been the most advanced when it comes to the rollout of the vaccination program is actually going to find himself left behind so other member states will we freely go on to make the reservations and booking for for the summer where where the public here in the uk and consumers here will will need to wait because certainly a lot of people won't go to destinations in the first instance that requires any type of quarantine as an example so i think this is going to need to change it's going to need to change very rapidly and it can be done so in a safe way without jeopardizing the the healthcare or have an impact on the hospitalization rate can i ask you briefly before i come to clement just in terms of europe itself then and i mean that the the european union block uh obviously the uk is no longer part of that but in terms of the coordination you're seeing between governments there um you mentioned that things are going to start opening up are are you encouraged that there are measures that are at least coordinated between government so that you can create a kind of zone and travel within those spaces that might be encouraging for companies such as yours uh in the summer well they're definitely attempt to do so and i i you know the european commission came out as you know with the proposal of the digital green certificate and there was some pressure on them and they've been criticized why they didn't come up with a common solution so so then when they presented that it turns out that a number of member states and have reservations about it say well it might not work in our country because we have x y and said there are unique conditions and and and this this is one of the problems now mind you i don't think we can aim for a perfect 100 digitalized solution on this you know taking place here from from tomorrow so i think we're going to need to live us working in the industry that there will be some variances on on how government are going to look at this in order to make sure that people can prove a vaccination that they've done you know they're testing or they're recovering from the virus in itself and that's a small price to pay if that is what it takes at this moment in time to enable travel to just get going again but i think very soon there needs to be an automated digitalized digital approach to this to make sure there's no complexity and no cost involved in travel once again clement a good point to come on to you your your business obviously is a slightly different one you're a long-term owner um you have properties all over the world in multiple cities and i think it'd be fair to say you know hong kong has had a a as a special set of circumstances before the pandemic we had the u.s china trade war we had the protest in 2019 the pro-democracy protest in 2019 here in hong kong and then the pandemic hit um you've been operating hotels across these markets and other services dealing with the pandemic as well as gearing up for what comes next give us a sense of some of the ways in which you've had to change your offering or alter the way you manage in order to adapt and deal with the specific conditions that we're facing now in terms of a health crisis and how to how that rolls out to your properties and hotels around the world yeah hi review kindly said earlier um we obviously do not deal with the sort of volumes that jane and johann deal with in terms of travel we are the peninsula group owns and operates 10 properties around the world which are all at the super luxury hotel level um so really we only cater to a pretty small segment of the overall you know travel population um but what we have seen there is really that as we believe also the fundamentals of hospitality have not really changed things that we emphasize such as personalization attention to detail providing very good service anticipating what the needs of our guests might be those qualities continue to be very much welcomed now i was very glad to hear jane talk about the recovery in china we only have two hotels but those have seen a similar recovery pattern we are seeing that domestic travel is there but also luxury travel is alive and well we're seeing that people still enjoy of course we've seen a lot of wealth creation in this world and that wealth is looking for experiences that they would like to enjoy and you know we're not really seeing any change to that um one of the things i would mention is you mentioned hong kong actually although the travel restrictions in hong kong are still very strict and there's very lit little international travel we're seeing a lot of domestic demand so even amongst our local audience we're seeing that appreciation and a wish for a quality or a luxury experience and we're encouraged by that as well now how has that product or the requirements changed again as mentioned earlier clearly health and safety is a very important factor and we've emphasized on that a lot we've also created more virtual experiences so you know you can even have like a zoom party for a wedding or an engagement and you know we can cater for that we can deliver food and then you know you can still have a party and generally um you know the world of digital has become more important in the world that we live in um already uh but you know we're looking forward to the future so for instance there are uh shopping arcades within the peninsula hotels which during this time we have repositioned somewhat um we're thinking that you know in the future there will still be um you know people who want to experience a good lifestyle we have converted part of the peninsula hong kong arcade into more of a lifestyle experience not just pure high-end fashion high-end retail so we're adapting to some of the changes that we're seeing in in that direction as well i guess the other thing is in the immediate term of course uh the demographics of where the visitors are coming from is changing much more domestic travel and of course there's this word staycation you know a lot of locals a lot of demand coming from that but actually if you think about it in a big mature market like the us a lot of demand is from the us you know that is nothing new for a country that becomes economic economically developed that you would expect to see quite a proportion of demand coming from the domestic audience and that's exactly what jane was referring to and what we're seeing a lot of here but you know in the short term we are adapting to of course you know different places of origin of where the customers are coming from and on that point i mean all of you mentioned both you and johan in particular jane's company is obviously already inherently digital but some of the changes that you've implemented are those are those issues or challenges or things that you've been thinking about implementing uh this graphics can you hear me you've completely pro sorry ravi sorry ravi you completely froze just now on my line and i couldn't hear your question okay i'll try again i was going to say in some in terms of some of the can you hear me now clement in terms of some of those in terms of some of those changes that you implemented are any of those things issues you'd been thinking about doing and had been accelerated by the crisis you know that that mantra among managers never waste a good crisis whereby you're building back better you're implementing changes and this crisis has forced you to accelerate ravi do wave if i if i get cut off because it seems the connection is not too good um but can you hear me yes we can hear you clements oh maybe okay all right um well of course there are many trends that we have been working on already things like sustainability very important for us and we've continued to take initiatives in that direction the whole world of digital virtual communications that has been very important as well but i think one thing that i would talk about which is more internal facing is the impact it has had in terms of our internal communications our the way that we manage the way that we've come together a lot more even between people who are based in different operations you know in the past it wasn't such a common practice to use video conferencing and to make people just pick up and look at each other on a screen and to communicate in that way so there are positives and i would like to think that and and you know to be honest going through a crisis like this of course we do our best to look after our staff at the same time as maintaining our service quality but it is an opportunity to increase efficiencies as well so hopefully coming out of this crisis we would have improved some of our internal practices we would have improved our financial resilience and our financial position and look towards more future development in the world of digital virtual and sustainability jane let me come to you the chinese tourist of course has been a very important part of the overall travel story in recent years in places like milan london paris shopping luxury um and the growing chinese middle class has gone abroad and visited and spent are you getting any sense uh in terms of your sales of what kind of appetite there will be for uh chinese to continue to go abroad um are you getting a sense that they're booking lots of trips already in anticipation of what is to come yes uh we looked at our search uh results uh the consumer's pent up demand for traveling abroad to europe uh to north america to south america and the rest of asia is very strong uh so as long as the virus is under control we're very hopeful to bring uh these customers to the wonderful beautiful countries around the world everywhere chinese consumers goals it will bring the buying power and job opportunity for the local economy and we're very excited to bring high quality of the customers over to these countries great johann let me come to you because europe is obviously a market which has had a lot of chinese tourists i want to go into a bit more of the dynamics of what a trip looks like though because in a post-dynamic world where you know in a pre-pandemic role we used to boogie something on an app traveling to an airport and it's as seamless and efficient as possible um in a place like hong kong it's incredibly easy to get through the airport uh compared to sometimes um some of the challenges in london as we think about those safety protocols what does a typical flight look like where are the particular pressure points on your journey from home to airport to flight can you give us a sense of where you think those biggest challenges and changes might be in the process from from home to plane well at this moment in time it's really you know uh you know the the checking procedures and then also you know the the the border force touch points you know that's where where the issues lies and and clearly because governments are uh you know having the restrictions in place there's a number of documents that needs to be checked and you need to show various uh you know evidence of the fact that you have your passenger locator form as an example and you need to prove your your uh you've been in some cases vaccinated or that you've been tested and all of that and of course the issue is that while you know governments are imposing these restrictions they're not you know uh to the same extent equipping the border force to deal with them and they haven't automated these services and in some cases they are handing off the liability now to the airlines to check some of these things even to the point you get fined if somebody isn't isn't uh you know haven't filled out this form correctly and it only takes a small small error in some of these forms and and you know you stop and hold up the lines and that's why you've been seeing queues of you know five to six hours at some you know um some places when it comes to the departure point so just really the the checking procedures and then also the approach on the border for the actual journey in itself is is relatively the same clearly you would have masked on board there's a limited service when it comes to the in-flight service and of course there's less people on board the planes but i mean these are relatively hopefully uh temporary changes before this gets resolved and but that is a big fear that i have and i i'm as soon as i can i i'm on to the authorities about these things that we cannot have kind of residues of all these restrictions lingering on just as after we saw after 9 11 actually you know the the type of security message they would put in place that that turned out you know out after a while it wasn't deficient at all you know the liquid in the hand luggage and so on as well so it's very important that we don't sit and have these things on unless they are scientifically proven that it needs to be there and that's why datum and robust scientific analysis on why restrictions and what restrictions are actually needed in order to to provide a safe reopening of travels to make sure that they don't stay on and drive complexity and drive costs because that could threaten the democratization of travel it's very interesting and also you talked to earlier about this idea of digitization of you know vaccine passports has been discussed i wonder whether some of those checks there might be an online system that say you know we as travelers might have to do before we get to the airport that might help to speed up that process in order that the burden doesn't necessarily go on on the airline is that the kind of thing that you might see happening in the future as as this becomes a realization this is more of a normal thing and we have to find a way of coping and and making the system adapt to to deal with it yes absolutely and i mean it it will go back to you know that ourselves and together with the authorities and the regulators will find you know the the most efficient way to do that whether that is in in an app form that the airline provider whether that is something that the government provides but you know i give you a taste of where we stand today i spoke to and i will not mention what country was but i spoke to one minister of one country and and i i i asked the person to say that look what type of evidence in what format are you looking for to welcome customers coming in and and the person said well i'll take it in any way form and shape it looks like just as long as i can get customers in here in a safe way so that means that everything from a piece of paper to an app or whatever that is now i i think it was partly a joke around that because clearly nobody wants to jeopardize and and sacrifice safety on that to make sure that these things are certified and valid but but it will tell you that we will have some weeks here and months before this you know gets landed and then i think we need to go through a you know some inconsistencies around this in the summer but after that happens this will be made in a common approach i believe clement one one topic that has been discussed you mentioned it before and i know uh you know i'll come up to the others with it is this around idea around sustainability there has been a suggestion that there might be less travel out of this because uh leading to you know maybe a more better environmental impact um you talked a little bit about this about being sustainable in your business can you give us a sense of what that means in practice and how that is reflected in the customer experience at some of your hotels yes um obviously we understand the importance of sustainability to the future of the world that we live in and that is not of course only for the current generation but for future generations as well now our you know global sort of climate footprint is not very big but nevertheless we believe that we can play a part in this and of course in the past people might not have associated a luxury with sustainability luxury is giving a lot of stuff away giving a lot of resources but we firmly believe that even by providing luxury you can do it in an increasingly sustainable way so examples are things like sourcing so we've done a lot of work in terms of sourcing more responsibly more sustainability more sustainably and actually we've taken some sacrifices actually our group was one of the first in the world to ban sharks finn being served on our menus now as you know that's a very important chinese delicacy but we decided to forego that because of you know the bigger picture the wider interests and of course we've been trying to do what we can in terms of reducing energy consumption waste management and so on but the underlying message is what we have done as a company for the last 13 or 14 years is to try and make sustainability a way of life for the people who work in our hotels and our various businesses so rather than being a top-down initiative where we're just saying do this or do that we're educating so that all of our staff live in a more responsible way in terms of sustainability and then that can pervade through the services we offer the products and and all the rest um and you know there's so much to be done but um you know in the measurements that we have such as um you know energy usage and all of this then at least we've made some improvements in all of those areas and um and and of course it's not just us i mean the the world i think has come together very nicely um within a relatively short period of time and made some real improvements but of course more is needed your man this is a particularly live issue i think in in europe i know in italy uh the government there is using some of the eu recovery fund uh monies it's been granted to try to build back their tourism industry along more environmentally sustainable and green lines um can you tell us a little bit about because when you talk about the democratization of travel obviously there is concerns that leads to you know issues around pollution in france as well there's been an initiative to to ban flights of a certain duration if rail alternatives are practicable give us a sense of how you see this working out for someone running an airline in europe uh which has been built on as you put it a much more freedom to fly a much more mass-market operation uh which has allowed people to get places in a way that they weren't able to say 10 15 20 years ago yes i mean easyjet was born out of the regulation as you know in the mid 90s and and the the slogan at the start of the company that you could fly now for for the cost and then then it's less than a pair of jeans and by the way it still is uh you know so so and that has allowed millions and millions of of ordinary people to take advantage of these products and services that previously was there only for for wealthy and privileged people and and and that force and that that you know strength that sits so close to millions and millions of people now are so strong so this will of course continue but what but what i i am so so so um you know observant about is the fact that there is a tendency by decision makers when it comes to sustainability as an example that they tend to focus much more on how we can actually choke the demand in here in order then to control and reduce the impact on hospitality and innovation in particular on the environment which is completely an awful narrative to do which basically means that you're going to make sure that well once again this is just something that some people can afford to do and it's not necessarily better for the environment certainly the load factors will be worse and there will be less you know investments that can be made because funds will be less in the industry so i look at this from the perspective that that first of all there's an imminent things that we need to do and within that comes a number of operational things we can do easy to test reduced its uh a carbon emission per passenger kilometer by one third since 2000 uh so there's things we can do as we speak and we continue to do those things the other one is what we're doing as the first major airline in the world and we're offsetting all the carbon emission from the fuel we're using so we're flying carbon neutral in that sound through the highest standards or products you can find within the carbon offsetting projects now that's an interim solution it's not the end game but that is something you can do right now to lessen the impact on on the environment and then thirdly the most important thing i i believe is you know access to groundbreaking technology and the development when it comes to both hydrogen as an example or or electric with the latest development of of of the the generation of sulphur batteries as an example are in amazing encouraging and the airbus as you know have set out that by mid-2030s now they expect to have a hundred plus safety of an hydrogen aircraft available so we need to get on to getting onto zero emissions aircraft and that is now within sight when i was onto this a couple of years ago i had a number of people say well it won't happen now nobody can say that it won't happen the question is when that will happen so there is the plan now and i'm also as you know i'm i'm chairman of airlines for europe and we've set up the road map on how we're going to de-carbonize aviation by 2050 in a very credible roadmap and and but of course we're going to need also the support and the funding from the government to get on to that and not only through penalties that actually just makes travel you know uh out of reach for for the millions of people who's now starting to enjoy this so so just to be clear you're saying to policymakers it's not just about arresting demand or choking demand as you put it but it's allowing people to travel but making sure the investments are made and the conditions put in place that the industry can become better through use of technology and more efficiencies in order that its output is less damaging than it was exactly it is now or wasn't in these years people should fly and travel more and it's up to us as an industry together with authorities to make sure that we reduce our impact on the environment the solution is not to get people to travel and and fly less that's not where we want to be so we need to make sure that we can do that in a sustainable way with a credible roadmap and that exists now and that's why we all got a responsibility to make sure that we can transition uh on to that next stage in that journey okay and i want to come back to you just on the chinese consumer because one of the trends we've seen over the pandemic is that a lot of the luxury sector i want to focus on that because inevitably a lot of ft readers are are in that segment but whereas in the past they might have gone abroad as i said to europe or indeed to hong kong even and done a lot of the luxury shopping we've seen during the pandemic a tendency to either spend at home or also to travel to hainan island uh the tropical island in in china that's become a very major destination for the the traveler but also for the luxury industry in the luxury sector are you seeing that as something that might be long-lasting that chinese consumers might be more inclined to stay at home and spend their money on luxury than going abroad what are you seeing in that luxury sector really uh the luxury traveler yes uh we saw a huge uh pent up demand on the luxury segment uh we love peninsula to open up more hotels in china and i think there are many more cities other than shanghaine beijing who will have the huge demand for luxury hotels such as peninsula uh if you look at the luxury walls in china during the weekend there are huge lines lining up to get into tiffany's lv's hermes etc and when you look at the gross trajectory into the hotels the hotels such as peninsula four seasons shangri-la etc gets the most premium customers in china uh one of the reasons is the gdp per capita is increasing every year for china china and more and more people can afford these luxury hotels the second reason is because the border now is kind of closed so people who can afford going abroad now turning into demands domestic travelers so they are really spending the money they save from the international tickets into the hotels into the attractions into the local buying uh local shopping experience so we have experienced a significant pickup for five star above for business class and first class domestic flight for business and first-class high-speed railway tickets so the luxury segments really is the leading winger in the recovery and going forward i think once the board opens again the luxury hotels and high-end uh spending will still lead the way right so we've got some questions from our audience i don't know where they're from from europe or asia but there's some good questions so i'm going to throw them out there um let me throw this to clement first are are you seeing the potential for lower frequency but longer stays are people choosing to stay in one place for a longer duration in the past but taking fewer trips is any evidence of that at the moment it's too early to see any particular trend because many of the places are still closed we have hotels in north america we have a hotel in paris we have hotels in southeast asia but the level of recovery of those hotels has not yet been at a level where we can see what the future trend is going to be what i would say in more general terms though is we really see that people are looking for experiences now more than ever and i very much echo what uh jane said that there's a lot of pent-up demand there is affordability there is wealth and when people have wealth they want to enjoy their wealth and they want to enjoy that through coming on an experience so in many ways whether the stays lengthened or not would depend on what we as an industry can offer to those people who are staying and here you know we and i think many of our you know fellow hoteliers are doing more and more in curating experiences for people so of course once upon a time the idea was you come into a hotel you stay for the night have a couple of meals and then maybe you do a business trip and then you leave but now there are programs you know immersion with local culture you know we do programs like you know learning to cook dim sum and doing tai chi and things like this and these are the sort of things that would create that more of that overall experience and um actually even in terms of local stations they're not always just one or two nights some people have chosen to stay longer because it's there's a sense of refuge and there's a sense of experience in that yes um johan another question from the audience more about managing during the pandemic and through it which obviously must have been one of the most challenging uh periods for any ceo of any industry but particularly i think all of yours to deal with how did you deal with issues around staffing and employees how did you manage really your people through this crisis well it's been incredibly a challenging task and and many many of our our viewers here are and particularly the panelists are leaders in in their own right and will have their experience about that as well no i think that the key thing is that first of all you need to try to get people you know to understand the context of which you are operating in and that takes some time also then and and some some resources in order to first of all set the scene and you know be realistic about the situation that we we're in i mean a year ago we were in lockdown we didn't fly anything the airline was grounded and we became grounded for for 11 weeks and of course people's immediate concerns is after the health care what this actually means you know am i going to have my job and what does this mean and the uncertainty about that when you then ultimately need to get on to very difficult decisions that that you're doing with your employee organization to resetting and and reshaping the the organization and that is difficult but you have to be on one hand realistic but also you need to point out and set out that look we're going to get ourselves out of this we are structural winners coming into this and we're going to be structural winners coming out of this we don't know exactly and we don't have the answers to all these questions but i think that an organization appreciates honesty and an authentic message from from his leadership and have the right to demand so which means that there's a combination of realism in there but also an absolute determination that look you're on the right team you're on the right company you know we we're going to get us through this all together and i can already see now that there's a tremendous tremendous um spirit among people in this organization that has come through this and and will be so and that was something that we're clearly going to build upon as we now are starting to to fly again but i think authenticity and and a genuine appreciation of the reality of the situation and keep engaging contact very often and in very close contact but also make sure that people know that look there there's we're going to get through this you know follow me and follow us on this journey i think that's an important message as well ravi can i jump in on this one yes please um i think very important is how much trust has been built up in the past with your workforce through the actions you've taken over many years this is an investment that has to be made over a long period of time and um over that period of time you know like your colleagues have seen what you've done what values do you have as an organization how have you treated people how have you dealt with previous hardship uh periods and we went through tsars in hong kong and um you know people still remembered the actions that we took at that time so um of course this time the scale of the crisis has meant that unfortunately words like furlough and layoff which were not words that had ever been in our dictionary before have had to enter the equation but nevertheless the level of support loyalty and commitment and even among some of the staff that have been laid off they come and thank us for the experiences that they've had before and um you know of course it doesn't make me feel good that they're in that position but at least one gets the sense that you know a great sense of trust had been built up through what we had done over many years yeah jane i want to ask you obviously china was hit first by this pandemic in the early part of last year really that was when you know the mainland was put under lockdown i know you had a tough year last year you've you've had a secondary listing in hong kong now and raised a good deal more money um tell me about the early days of managing this crisis for you and tripp.com and the group in china what was that like and how did you make sure your staff were on side sure uh we uh understand that the travel in the long run will always grow uh so last year q1 it was the most difficult year for china and for chinese travel industry so in q1 our chairman james and i volunteer to our board that we will take zero salary until industry recovers and our vp volunteered to our board they will take 50 percent uh reduction for their salary however we retained our workforce our staff will work four days and stay at home for one day doing some trainings and after the effective control of the virus our industry start to recover so very quickly our workforce is fully loaded and this labor day weekend we have to borrow more than one thousand uh percent employees from the other organization to handle the pent-up demand uh so all our measures have worked very well uh we always believe that if the government does a very good job controlling the virus uh we'll be able to recover very quickly so the team was very united and make sure we uh weather the storm together clement we're coming close towards the end but i want to ask you one thing johan already talked about the coordination among governments in the eu as one economic bloc obviously um the uk is separate but as someone who manages businesses in multiple countries one of the things that strikes me is that even if the situation improves in one country unless there's some coordination and other countries are on board it's very hard to see how business revives something like back back to normal um are the if you were to be able to tell global governments one thing in order to improve their coordination what is the thing that they need to do in order to get this industry back up and running definitely to have a travel protocol that can be applied similarly across different places of course we hear that for instance some vaccines are approved by some places but not by others it would be great to have a uniform set of vaccines that are recognized and that a travel protocol is put together in association with that if i may just speak you know on behalf of hong kong of course we want to welcome international travelers from all over the world but actually the most immediate priority is to open up between china and hong kong and that is being worked on at the moment there are some uh you know initiatives right now to open up a bit more traveling between china and hong kong we're working on a bubble with singapore as well but we're hoping that that would set a precedent for other places to adopt bubbles as well but um yes um really a uniform protocol right so we have about a minute and a half before we before we go i want to ask each of you a a personal question as travel leaders and people who probably like to travel a lot uh when things return to somewhat approaching normal i just wanted to ask what the first thing you wanted to do uh when you could travel so is there a place you want to go is there an experience you want to have uh be when when borders open up and flights available jay can i start with you where's the first place you want to go or the first thing you want to do when travel returns to normal oh i love many places but my favorites are africa great i i think that sounds quite fun johan what about you where do you fancy going as soon as things are regular anywhere i go anywhere i go anywhere where we have our people where we have a base so i i can meet you know our crew again and and and our customers but i'm not picky after being over a year in lockdown you know i take it anywhere that reflects what my 13 my 50 year old son said exactly i'll take a plate anywhere if it's from hong kong to macau i'll take it um clement for you where would you like to go and what would you like to do when things kick off like many people uh family should take priority um i have family abroad um i have an elderly elderly parent i would love to go and see them that of course is high priority the other thought in my mind is that despite the travel restrictions we have a big project in london and i've sent a whole bunch of people to london with no certainty of how and when they're going to return and that's amazing loyalty for them to go but i would love to go and join them and be able to be part of that team fantastic on that note i want to thank all of you for an absolutely brilliant panel uh reminder all the viewers this is available to be on demand on the ft global boardroom website and on that i'll hand back to the studio thanks so much

2021-05-12 14:42

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