Travel, Leisure & Hospitality
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Vinay Parmar, UK Customer & Digital Experience Director, National Express
Travel, Leisure & Hospitality
The travel, leisure and hospitality industries are experiencing turbulent times. Fortunately, statistics indicate a rapid economic turnaround. Across the sector, businesses have been impacted, with significant redundancies and heavy reliance on government support schemes. Most travel groups have essentially moved into hibernation by cutting all possible costs, maintaining minimum overheads, and undertaking redundancy programmes, to keep the level of costs to a minimum before they can return to normal trading.
However, those businesses that have been quick to adapt their business models and diversify their offering have been more resilient to the challenges being faced. Those businesses that have flexed their offering have created new opportunities for revenue and will ultimately be in a stronger position to weather the storm. Many travel groups have encouraged and accepted deferral of holidays to allow the retention of cash within the business and they are offering fully flexible bookings and cancellation policies as standard to increase the level of customer confidence and loyalty.
The sector is facing increasing pressure to deliver innovation, quality and value. Brand strength and effective distribution channels are becoming more important than ever. The industry is increasingly engaging with digitally active consumers who expect to be able to interact with brands on a personalised, multichannel basis and who are harnessing social media and mobile technology at an ever-faster rate.
The growth area in this broad and diverse sector has been in food delivery platforms. With Ocado and Just East in the FTSE 100, Deliveroo poised for floatation Spring 2021 and Delivery Hero, the Berlin headquartered food delivery platform already operating in around 50 countries and employing 27,000 employees globally; this is certainly a space to watch.
We work with
Within this varied and rapidly changing sector, our clients include Hotel Groups, Luxury Travel, Entertainment companies (including Cinema Groups and Health Clubs), Restaurant and Pub Groups, Food Delivery Platforms, National Transport Providers, Travel Businesses and Tour Operators.