2009 Outlook and Strategy Prescriptions
2009 Outlook and Strategy Prescriptions By Albert Villadolid, GM Amadeus All of us are in agreement that next year is shaping up to be a very challenging and demanding year for the travel industry. We are witnessing a global financial crisis in the making that is described by many experts as the most severe financial turmoil since 1929. But history teaches us that all crises, even this current crisis, will also pass. The key question, therefore, is what we in the industry should be doing to get out of this crisis as fast as possible. I had listed down a few prescriptions that we can do: FIRST: They say that the Chinese word for crisis carries a double meaning: on one end it refers to danger, on the other end, opportunity. The past crises in 1983, 1997, 2001 all hit our industry very hard, but take a closer look, these were also the years when current industry leaders and challengers were established or started to flourish. Take a look at this single unbroken sentence and tell me what you see: “THEOPPORTUNITYISNOWHERE!” When you break this, what did you read? “THE SECOND: SEIZE THE OPPORTUNITIES Seeing the opportunities is not enough. Seize them. The no-brainer opportunities for our industry today are in the areas of adopting new business models that are sustainable, profitable and beneficial to all stakeholders. Another is the use of available and new tools and technologies that can make your business more effective and efficient. Find out if the crisis is really telling you its high time to focus more on activity-based management, in building and maintaining customer relationship management systems, in streamlining, or re-skilling up-skilling our workforce, in pursuing multiple channels and in creating new streams of revenues. THIRD: STARVE THE HYSTERIA, FEED THE NEEDS We can easily be tempted to join the fray of self-flagellating creatures who listen and watch the distressing news of economic collapse, but the better approach is to start feeding the needs and wants of our customers for travel. Inspire our customers to elect to travel, because travel is good for business, or personal pleasure, or both. It requires from us to be creative in our customer engagements, innovative in our marketing campaigns, inspiring and assuring at best to our customers, so that travel gets an even share of the wallets of the consumers of our society. We must take a collective action to consciously break the vicious cycle of depression and stimulate the needs and wants for travel. Working together, as partners in industry, we know that this current crisis will also pass, and if we choose our paths carefully, we can be confident of our success. Let me end with this quote: “Even the darkest night ends with a bright beautiful morning!”
