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Another day, another session.

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We are soon coming to the end of our series and wow it has been educational as well as inspirational for the industry.

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This week we were joined by Jennifer Bridie of Southwest Airlines. We talked about restrictions,  destinations and more but here is the recap if you missed it!

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The travel industry (air primarily) saw a shift in KPIs from seats to how we can educate and make clients feel reassured during travel.

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It was wonderful to see how Southwest kept in mind not only empathy around what people may be going through but also ensuring that their quality of service was ever present.

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Restrictions:

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- We have heard them all and it seems like a dizzying revolving door.

- The travel industry had to really step up and train and educate their employees on the front line in terms of cleaning. Revenue and operations also had their job cut out for them with the calculation of spare seating that was put in place.

- It was reassuring to hear that the airlines have not laxed cleaning methods. They continue to clean according to requirements and add them into their standard SOPs.

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Costs Increases & Predictions:

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As we see the increase of costs for cleaning and meeting the restrictions required it was good to hear that airlines and even low fare carriers are not looking to roll this additional cost to their clients to absorb it.

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Who is traveling:

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We are seeing more leisure travel currently. Business travel had previously halted and is now coming back but still has to climb to reach the numbers again of what were seen pre-pandemic in terms of business travel and group travel.

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Current Destination Hotspots:

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- In a nutshell we are seeing that the trend is leaning towards nature, parks, beaches and open outdoors.

- There is, however, a rise in demand for city destinations such as Las Vegas, New York and Florida in terms of groups and leisure travel.

- These trends have been affected by restrictions and requirements (i.e. after Las Vegas instituting masks again there was a drop in movement).

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Vaccination:

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That V word everyone is talking about!

As we see the shift in destination requirements now making it easier to travel for the vaccinated by easing quarantine and testing requirements, Southwest is highly encouraging rather than mandating vaccination.

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For their customers, their focus is more on education and informing them on destination requirements before travel. They have a team monitoring the constantly changing restrictions and for persons requiring the latest on domestic and near international travel restrictions you can visit https://www.southwest.com/coronavirus/.

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As we continue to navigate the constant changes affecting the travel industry be sure to connect with Jennifer Bridie, our guest speaker, as well as our founder Alexandria Tomayko.

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