April 8, 2020 - More signs that perhaps it is time to say Goodbye Season 2020, as American Airlines and Qatar Airways shelve all plans for Dubrovnik this year. 

One of the most bizarre things in my world at the moment (and with so much weird stuff going down, it has to be bizarre to even get a mention at the moment) is the lack of understanding in some quarters that things have changed, perhaps (or more likely, probably) forever. 

Less than 2 weeks ago, on March 25, 2020, I wrote an article called Hope v Reality: Will There Be a 2020 Tourist Season in Croatia? The article got a lot of attention, and it was also carried by leading Croatian portal Index.hr (thank you! - you can see the Croatian version here).

One of the points I made in that was that people were on different stages of understanding around the globe about the pandemic, with people demanding I tell them if their flights were going to be ok in April. As if I run the airlines. 

That was then, and the world has changed several times since March 25. But still the questions fill my inbox. Will Ryanair be flying in May? Is my Jet2 flight in June going to be ok?

I have no idea if and when this pandemic will pass, and how the world will look from the other side. Optimists (and I include myself among them) hope there will be a late season, even if the summer is lost. Here is what the airlines think - this from ExYuAviation:

American Airlines has cut its international summer schedule by 60% to match a sharp drop in demand due to the coronavirus Covid-19 outbreak. The carrier’s seasonal service between Philadelphia and Dubrovnik, which was to run between June and October on a daily basis, has been suspended for the entire summer season. “Nobody is booking travel”, Vasu Raja, American’s Senior Vice President for Network Strategy said. “If we can reduce our capacity this summer, we can reduce our expenses”, he added. In total, American is suspending 25 summer seasonal flights until 2021. It will focus on services into London Heathrow and Madrid, where passengers can connect to flights on its partners British Airways and Iberia, respectively.

In the same article, ExYuAviation also reports that Qatar Airways has also postponed its planned Doha to Dubrovnik route until May 17, 2021, and Air Baltic similarly from Vilnius. And the news from Germany is hardly encouraging either...

The ever-reliable ch-aviation portal, whose main subsidiary office is in Zagreb (see TCN feature story last year), talked about the reduction of capacity of another important player in the Croatian low-cost market - Eurowings - in Lufthansa Group confirms Germanwings closure yesterday.

In tandem with its capacity rationalisation, Eurowings' headcount is also expected to be reduced in line with the reshaping of its network to focus on short- and medium-haul routes. As such, Eurowings will reduce the overall number of aircraft it contracts. In the short-haul segment, an additional ten A320-200s are planned to be phased out while its long-haul business, which is run under the commercial responsibility of Lufthansa (LH, Frankfurt Int'l), will also be reduced.

It should be noted that it is not all doom and gloom from the budget airlines with flights to the region, as Wizzair plans to restart operations in three locations in former Yugoslavia (although not Croatia at this point) in May, pending government approval. 

Minister of Tourism Gari Capelli, who is fond of talking numbers and percentage increases at every turn, was a little more downbeat in his assessment of how things will pan out - read more in Tourism Minister Predicts Revenue Plunge, Regardless of Summer Season.

So is it Goodbye Season 2020, or is there still some hope?  Most people will be much further along the path of understanding of the current realities than they were two weeks ago, but here are the main factors to consider when assessing if there will still be a season:

• Even if all this is over by June, so many people will have lost their jobs that the market of tourists is going to be much smaller. 
• Competition from countries like Italy, Greece, Egypt and Turkey will be INSANE - and Croatia never does well on price. 
• There will be much fewer flights, even for those who are happy to jump on a plane and mix with others. 
• Not so many people will have holiday time anyway, as many have been forced to take their holidays now as companies rationalise their losses. 
• There will be big patriotic campaigns from governments (including Croatia) to holiday at home and support domestic tourism - the French in France, the Italians in Italy etc.
• SO many tourism businesses in Croatia and elsewhere will go bankrupt that there will be an inevitable disruption in the tourism infrastrucure. For example, a hotel group going under would leave a destination without hotels. 

I really wish things looked brighter, but when the big airlines are taking decisions in early April to postpone all until next year, perhaps we should all start to face up to the reality of Goodbye Season 2020.

For those looking for direction on planning for post-corona tourism and how that might even look like, I highly recommend the excellent recent series by Zoran Pejovic from Paradox Hospitality on post-corona tourism. 

April 7, 2020 - Continuing his stimulating series look at travel in the post-corona era, Zoran Pejovic of Paradox Hospitality turns his attention to the subjects of health and safety.  

The world is slowly waking up to the fact that things are not going back to pre-corona times. As days and weeks go by, I keep getting fewer funny memes in my inbox and WhatsApp messages, and more serious articles pointing to the downfall of the travel industry and the difficulties it will face once it all resumes. The question I get asked more and more is how travel will look like after this is over? I have already given some predictions about the post corona travel. This article will dig a bit deeper into the emotional aspects that go into travel decision-making, and how those will evolve in the post-corona travel era.

What can we learn, for example, from the toilet paper craze that dominated the early days of the coronavirus pandemic? We can learn that there is such a thing called zero-risk bias. Zero-risk bias is an interesting defence mechanism that evolution has gifted us, and it really means sorting out some small, tangential, less important problems rather than those large, often unsolvable problems on the individual level, so that we regain some sense of control. Zero-risk bias comes fully into the play when we are faced with the larger questions on health and safety. Hence buying toilet paper in the wake of the Coronavirus pandemics. Why is this important?

When it comes to travel decision making, we are motivated by, broadly speaking, two sets of emotions, promotion emotions and prevention emotions. Promotion emotions of self-elation, recognition, excitement, delight and satisfaction, especially satisfaction derived through the acquisition of new knowledge and new experiences, have dominated the travel world over the past decade or so. This especially applies to the “upper middle” and “entry luxury” segments of the market. The idea of personal betterment through travel, especially via experiential travel and the rise of the affluent traveller in contrast to the mass tourist has been studied, discussed and fully acknowledged, even hyped as health beneficial. Recent psychological research conducted by prestigious Cornell University has shown that such behaviour, the one hallmarked by experiential rather than material purchases, does indeed make one a better person. Better is here meant in terms of sense of gratitude and generosity which in turns propels one’s social behaviour, which ultimately leads to better general health.

In this time of rapidly evolving contexts, we need to examine some of the trends that made sense then and ask if they will still make sense afterwards. The longer this crisis takes, the more likely it is that prevention emotions will take over as the driving factors in the travel decision making. Prevention measures that deal with risk reductions, absence of problems and absence of discomfort, can in turn again lead to satisfaction, confidence and a sense of security.

I will look a bit more here into the segment of health and safety, on a more practical and applicable level. When we extrapolate from the current situation and apply it to the hotel industry, we can safely assume that hand sanitizers for example will become more permanently placed in all hotel public areas, entrance to the hotels, to the bars and restaurants and next to the elevators. Also, we will probably see alcohol-based hand sanitizers as part of the standard set-up in public restrooms, next to the soap dispensers, and the restrooms will have to be equipped with no-touch garbage containers as well. Also, the regulation of fresh air share in the hotel public areas will need to be controlled more rigorously by air quality sensors. It might become a standard that hotels need to be able to provide 100% fresh air supply every hour or so in the public areas, especially conference halls and meeting rooms. In terms of operations, all staff will have to complete additional hygiene training courses, and housekeeping will have a special schedule for cleaning high-frequency areas such as elevator buttons, door handles and restrooms. All of these activities might lead to a heightened sense of safety that post-corona era travellers might look for.

What does the toilet paper craze have to do with this? Well, extrapolating from the current situation is fine and will probably lead to some good decision-making on behalf of the hotel operators, but I expect the real changes to come from somewhere else. So, for example, those with a desire to travel, being unable to prevent all the challenges regarding the anxiety of the post-corona travel might subconsciously use the zero-risk bias and eliminate some other risk, way smaller and unrelated. One of those might be handling of cash, for example. Cash can be a transmitter of the virus. However, more importantly, cash often presents a risk for those who are carrying it with them. Cash is easier to lose, there are issues with currency exchange and overall people feel more comfortable, in this day and age, handling payments via credit cards and more so mobile payment options. So, cash, which was already dying out, might be given a final blow by the coronavirus pandemic. In this case, eliminating cash as one of the small, unrelated risks might play the role of the stockpiling of the toilet paper.

Other measures that will play a role in travel decision making motivated by prevention emotions concern ease of access, ease of use and privacy, but I am more interested in finding another “toilet paper” risk elimination.

You can read more on this subject of post-coronavirus travel from Zoran here:

Travel Industry: Keep Communicating and Visibility

Build Scenarios! Be Present! Take Time to Think!

Post-Coronavirus Travel and Tourism: Some Predictions

Croatian Tourism 2020 and Coronavirus: Let’s Postpone the Season

Post-Corona Tourism Planning: Hope is Not a Good Business Strategy

You can connect with Zoran Pejovic via LinkedIn.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 7th of April, 2020, the Croatian Government's rescue package has many measures related to the tourism industry, which is Croatia's strongest economic branch and is most affected by the coronavirus crisis. The measures include job preservation, financial and administrative burdens, wage benefits and tax breaks, RTL reports.

Nonetheless, Croatian tourism professionals are in awe, especially with regard to Croatia's very many private renters, and almost half of them think they will not be able to support their families without their usual tourist rental income.

Otherwise, we would not be able to take so much as a peek at Gordana's apartments in Crikvenica as of the beginning of April, because they would be full of readily paying tourists.

"We get cancellations almost every day, from now until June the 15th, everything has been cancelled, whatever we had. Otherwise, we should have entered the full season from April the 6th. We had almost 70 percent of the capacities filled,'' says Gordana Derossi, the owner of the Crikvenica apartments.

Last year, Kvarner enjoyed the best tourist Easter in the past three years, and it was believed that this positive trend would continue this year. Opatija makes for a sad image too, with its empty promenades. Private renters are now beginning to pass over from feelings of concern to fear, with their bookings dropping by as much as 50 percent. However, they do say that the Croatian Government is doing its job so far with the introduced coronavirus measures.

"I didn't use the tax deferral measures, but I do welcome the 50 percent less tourist tax," Derossi says. However, in March alone, a 70 percent drop in arrivals was calculated, with a 50 percent slash in overnight stays.

"Cumulatively, these figures are slightly lower, however, this is a direct consequence of the coronavirus pandemic, and I believe that unfortunately, in such an atmosphere, we'll continue with this sort of tourist traffic, which is practically non-existent at the moment, throughout April and May," said Kristijan Stanicic, director of the Croatian National Tourist Board (HTZ).

Although HTZ is trapped in terms of Croatia's promotion on the foreign market, they remain present on social networks, and jobs in tourism have been more or less secured by the recently introduced government anti-epidemic measures.

"These are very important for the tourism sector, given that tourism will be the most affected sector in Croatia this year," Stanicic said.

Because the season is lost, the consequences will be felt for years. Tourism accounts for more than 20 percent of Croatia's gross domestic product, and it seems that the coronavirus effect is far from over yet.

Make sure to follow our dedicated section for all you need to know about coronavirus in Croatia.

April 5, 2020 - The Lika Destination Cluster wants you to stay at home now so you can enjoy the region later.  

March, when spring travel or defining details for summer holidays usually takes place, has suddenly turned into the toughest month, much like all of this year.

The coronavirus pandemic currently affects all sectors of business and the livelihoods of people around the world, especially in the tourism sector.

Just because there is no tourist activity now does not mean that you should stop communicating on social networks. The focus should be on daydreaming, exploring, and planning your travel for later on.

Thus, HRTurizam reports that the most active tourist cluster in Croatia, the Lika Destination Cluster, is sending a message to all travelers: Stay home and plan a vacation to the Lika destination.

"We believe that when all this is over, the desire to discover new magical places will be greater than ever, and thus the experiences will be even more valuable. Excess free time is well-used for travel planning, and Lika is an indispensable dream vacation that offers a unique blend of land and sea where you have the opportunity to change as many as three climates and experience a unique contrast phenomenon,” the Lika Destination Cluster points out.

Lika Destination points out that the region is abundant in natural phenomena at all levels of protection, and as much as 60% of the ​​Lika area is located in the NATURA 2000 ecological network and is extremely attractive for all forms of green tourism. ”In Lika, there are three of eight Croatian national parks (Plitvice Lakes, Paklenica and Northern Velebit) worth visiting at any time of the year. The destination also houses the birthplace of Nikola Tesla, the birthplace of Dr. Ante Starcevic, Europe's first printing press, and rich cultural heritage. Also, it is definitely recommended to visit protected natural areas,” the Cluster points out.

In addition to the natural resources, Lika has also been developing content for an active holiday from adrenaline activities such as ziplines, horseback riding, buggy rides, kayaking, and hiking.

When talking about Lika, we should definitely emphasize the authentic gastronomic offer, and especially the gastronomic delicacies with local ingredients from Lika Quality.

Currently, there are 169 products in the system from 59 manufacturers from the Lika area, which covers the area of ​​Lika-Senj, Zadar and Karlovac counties.

Products under the Lika Quality label are available at the Lika Quality product point of sale at Plitvice Lakes National Park, where small local producers for the first time had the opportunity to sell their products under a common brand in one of the most visited places in Croatia. Soon the products will also be on sale in the Northern Velebit National Park, Paklenica National Park, and Velebit National Park and other protected areas in Lika.

"You can already dream of being warmed by the sun as you stroll through the Velebit meadows, feel the water drops from the powerful waterfalls of Plitvice Lakes and enjoy the flavors of traditional Lika dishes," concluded the Lika Destination Cluster.

Although the Cluster does not yet have its own webshop, they have joined the Facebook group Likca Placa where you can find information on products and manufacturers from Lika Destination, among which are manufacturers whose products bear the Lika Quality label.

Lika is a destination, and within the Lika Cluster, the destinations within the region are actively working on a variety of promotional activities, from a joint Lika destination ticket to 3 and 7-day ready-made tourist arrangements.

To read more about travel in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.

 April 5, 2020 - In the latest in his series on planning for post-corona tourism, Zoran Pejovic of Paradox Hospitality on the need to think longterm and resist using hope as a business strategy. 

It seems that most people are still locked in some sort of disbelief or shock over the ongoing Coronavirus crisis, even though most of the Western world has been in the lockdown for a couple of weeks now. I don’t know how else to explain such a glaring lack of strategic thinking on behalf of some, otherwise very sane and thoughtful people.

Before moving on, I have a question for people not wanting to address the longterm economic aspects of the lockdowns and quarantine. What is the purpose of this? Do you sincerely believe that you are proving your moral superiority by not even wanting to engage in talks about the economic aspects of the crisis? No, that doesn’t make you morally superior, if anything it makes you blind. On top of that, this is a false dichotomy. You can fully support all the aspects of the lock-down and quarantine, and still discuss how many people are going to lose their jobs over it, how many lives will be lost due to the economic downturn, how many businesses will bankrupt and how the way we do things is going to change.

Now, that I have gotten that off my chest, I must start by saying that hope is not a good business strategy. I have already written on the need for scenario planning, which is an amazing tool, especially when it comes to answering the questions on future trends and recognizing changes that come with those trends. In this crisis, scenario planning is a great tool that might be used to answer some of your budgetary questions as well. Recognizing the right scenario might save you some money in your wallet. The biggest question that all the businesses are facing right now is how long will this last, and scenario planning is a perfect tool to use in this case.

Nevertheless, if you have answered some of your more practical questions, on how to keep you and your teams safe and introduced remote work, and signed up for all Zoom and Slack apps, and when you have answered some of the budgetary questions, by planning different cashflows based on different scenarios, the longterm strategic questions still remain to be answered.

If you survive this crisis, do you want your business to grow or to scale? If you don’t know the difference, it is time to read up.

The biggest question you have to ask yourself though, is whether your product will have a demand after the crisis is over, whether the processes you have in place will be affected and whether your business model will still be viable. These are the three key aspects of your business that you need to think about deep and think about hard. These are also the three aspects of your business that require you to put your innovator’s hat on as well. When people usually think about innovation, they usually consider product innovation, but a larger space for improvement lies in the process innovation and the business model itself.

Let’s apply this to the hotel that largely focuses on the conference segment, as an example.

If your hotel is a conference hotel and that is your main product, you might be at a large disadvantage after this crisis is over. Many businesses have already moved to Zoom conferencing and might stay there indefinitely, and even those that will want physical conferences, conventions and seminars will be more cautious for a while due to reputation damage that might follow should something undesirable occur, such as a new outbreak for example. So, you need to be thinking about changing your product. Perhaps moving into a more wellbeing retreat center could work for your hotel. You need to be thinking who is buying your products, businesses or individuals. Individuals might be less risk-averse in the immediate post-crisis times then businesses, which might inform some of your longer-term, strategic decisions.

When it comes to process innovation, there is much to be done here. Processes and process innovations are often not visible to the guests, so it is often disregarded as less important, even though this is where you usually save your money. However, I am thinking that it might be the time to bring some of those invisible processes to the front and show it to the guests. If your hotel has maintained the reputation of having an amazingly silent and invisible housekeeping service, you might need to be thinking about bringing these services forward now, making them visible. People are motivated largely by prevention emotions, so playing to their sense of safety by making the cleaning process more visible and more prominent, might be one of the ways to go.

Finally, the innovation of the business model of the hotel industry has been a long time coming. Currently, hotels operate under one of the four models, under hotel management agreements, branded or unbranded, under franchise agreements, as owner/family operation or as under lease agreements. This is the one where I can’t bring forward many solutions, but you need to be thinking about all your stakeholders, and sharing the fruits of the success when it is all good, but also responsibility for surviving downturns more across the board.

You can read more on this subject of post-coronavirus travel from Zoran here:

Travel Industry: Keep Communicating and Visibility

Build Scenarios! Be Present! Take Time to Think!

Post-Coronavirus Travel and Tourism: Some Predictions

Croatian Tourism 2020 and Coronavirus: Let’s Postpone the Season

You can connect with Zoran Pejovic via LinkedIn.

After you have looked at all of this, think about your purpose, why do you do what you do, and will that fit into the new, emerging world. Think deep and think hard. You might come out of this crisis stronger than you thought possible.

April 2, 2020 - Will the main tourist season be saved in Croatia? A look at the country's biggest market - Germany. 

Goran Rihelj of HRTurizam writes that at present, the main hope of the tourism sector is that at least part of the peak tourist season will be salvaged in Croatia, especially for private renters, in order to generate at least some tourist traffic and earn some profit.

But the current state of the coronavirus development tells us that it is not realistic to expect any tourist activity this year, let alone in the main tourist season. 

Germany has traditionally been Croatia’s primary market, and so it was last year. The total turnover in 2019 (overnights) is dominated by the German market (19.5%), followed by the domestic market (12.73%), and Slovenia (10%) and Austria (7%).

If we look at the current situation around the coronavirus, where we have more questions and assumptions than answers, we can very optimistically expect that we will still get some tourist traffic in the main tourist season.

All 16 regions in Germany have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic, and as of March 31, 2020, in Germany, there are 62,000 coronavirus cases and 583 deaths, according to the Robert Koch RKI Institute. The regions most affected are Hamburg, Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg.

Scientists from the universities of Mainz and Hamburg and an interdisciplinary research group have developed an "optimistic scenario" about the early development of the coronavirus pandemic in Germany.

According to Maniz economics professor Klaus Wälde, who co-authored the study, Germany is currently just at the beginning of the pandemic, which is expected to peak in June, while full recovery is expected in Germany or August or September.

According to the study, the coronavirus pandemic in Germany is not expected to end before August or September, reports Swr.de

The data are "rough and optimistic forecasts", the scientists explained in the study's conclusion, as key issues related to the coronavirus pandemic have not yet been addressed and, there are too many assumptions. In Austria, there are currently 10,366 coronavirus cases and 146 deaths, and in Slovenia 802 cases and 15 deaths.

A survey by the Croatian Chamber of Commerce conducted among family accommodation providers found that over 90 percent of them feel the effects of the coronavirus on business in the form of reduced reservations, and 60 percent estimate their current financial damage at up to HRK 50,000.

More than 2200 family accommodation providers, mostly from Primorje-Gorski Kotar, Split-Dalmatia and Istria counties, participated in the survey. As many as 94 percent of them offer accommodation only, only 3 percent are bed and breakfast, and only 2 percent are rural tourism.

Also, the survey reveals that Germany is a key market for three-quarters of renters surveyed.

Although Croatia is an auto destination (78% of guests arrive by car, 15% by air, 4% by bus / Tomas Summer 2017) in the current situation, where we are all in self-isolation, where borders are closed, and air traffic is grounded, it is difficult to expect a quick opening of borders and any tourist activity. Ultimately, no one knows exactly how long this situation will last, and only then does the loosening of measures and the gradual opening of borders begin.

If we look at the "optimistic" estimates of the study from Germany, Rihelj says; unfortunately, we can hardly expect that there will be any tourist activity in the main tourist season. Although, of course, everyone in tourism is hoping that there will still be tourism activities, realistic estimates and logic tell us that tourism will only recover in the spring of 2021. There are also many factors, as well as too many unknowns about the coronavirus, so it is extremely difficult to plan and predict anything.

Rihelj concludes by saying when the whole situation calms, we still do not know whether the coronavirus will return at the beginning of winter this year, i.e., whether it will remain or just disappear as SARS, and whether scientists will find a cure. Looking at the current bigger picture, unfortunately, tourism can expect an awakening only from next year, and of course not in the same numbers as it has so far.

To read more about travel in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.

March 29, 2020 - How will Croatian Tourism 2020 look like? Paradox Hospitality CEO Zoran Pejovic on why we should postpone the season, and what that means. 

Yes, there is a possibility that the pandemic will not be over before the height of the summer. Yes, there is a possibility that it might take another 12 months to tackle this crisis. However, in case that we start defrosting sometime in June and ramping up again in July and end up having good August and September, what we are doing to mitigate some of the effects of the lost preseason, of April, May and June? I am going to be kind here and assume that things are being done as we speak, but due to the lack of available information I am going to suggest the three most obvious measures that need to be taken at this point, other than direct financial relief to those who are directly affected by the crisis, especially to those that are legally forbidden to continue with their businesses:

Here are some of my thoughts that I hope Croatian National Tourist Board and Ministry of Tourism are already considering.

Start communicating to the World

I see no communication from Croatian tourism bodies towards the world. I see no visibility or messages of well-being towards the world. I have already written in the importance of staying visible and communicating as well as the type of messages we should be sending out to the world. Here is just one example, of us telling again the stories of Hvar Island literally being a health sanitarium, or the story of more than 600 wild medicinal, aromatic and honey plant species in Croatia, 120 of which are traditionally used in folk medicine, food, oils, spirits, and more. These are perfect stories to tell, they encompass both promotion and prevention emotions dealing in health aspects, well-being and safety simultaneously.

Here are also examples of how Portugal and South Africa have started communicating:

Negotiate with and incentivize airline companies to continue flying pass the current dates

If we take Split as an example, and If we look at the current flight schedules, most of the flights finishing throughout September, some even at the end of August. We need to have the continuous influx of flights throughout October and even November. October must make up for May and November must be our new April.

The airlines are hurting badly, and they are looking for government subsidies, but they are also trying to reschedule flights rather than return money for the tickets. So, perhaps it might be in their best interest to continue flying late into the year as well, much later than initially planned. We will have late start to the season but need to push well into the late fall if we are to salvage anything from 2020.

Shift the focus and start planning “Autumn 2020” project

Autumn can’t be about “sea and sun”, so this is a perfect opportunity to let go of some of the stereotypical views of Croatia as only a summer destination. If schools have managed to go online within a week, and some of the administrative apparatus managed to move closer to the 21. century within weeks, we can finally present Croatian tourism brand as a fusion of culture, history and gastronomy, all underscored with the strong wellness message. All messaging has to reflect this new narrative.

Short term speaking focus back almost entirely towards the most resilient markets, and in this case that means, the wealthiest ones so the Nordics, Switzerland, Benelux countries and Germany. Advertising budgets need to be channeled from Asia and United States to the European emitting markets.

This also means that the ferry lines need to keep going longer into the fall, national parks must stay open longer and many other concessions and trade-offs have to be undertake, some of which might even include free highway tolls for those that are driving to Croatia.

If we don’t salvage something of 2020, assuming the pandemic allows, 2021 will not be a year of recovery, but a year of complete mess and disarray.

You can read more on this subject of post-coronavirus travel from Zoran here:

Travel Industry: Keep Communicating and Visibility

Build Scenarios! Be Present! Take Time to Think!

Post-Coronavirus Travel and Tourism: Some Predictions

You can connect with Zoran Pejovic via LinkedIn.

March 28, 2020 - So how will post-coronavirus travel and tourism look like? Some predictions from Zoran Pejovic of Paradox Hospitality.

The good news is that coronavirus pandemic will be over one day. The bad news is that we don’t know when that day will come. The neutral news is that we have no clue how life in general, but particularly travel and tourism, will look like after the pandemic is over. What we know for certain is that it will not look as it did back in 2019.

I have already written on the needs for scenario planning. It helps you look at different scenarios based on the matrix of the optimistic and pessimistic versions of the aspects that define your business and the industry. It will also bring you out of the bubble that you might be in, by opening your eyes to different directions that the world might be heading in. Scenario planning is a proper tool, and if there was ever a time to use, it is now. It is not prophesizing or predicting.

However, we can’t fully refrain from predictions. As far as I can see there are several things that are speeding to change. We don’t know for example if social distancing will become the “new normal” in years to come, and that is one of the aspects we can use in our scenario planning matrixes. But there are other processes that were already on the way, that might just happen sooner than expected. For example, it does seem that cash is running its historic course. Online shopping will continue to flourish. Online schooling will become the new frontier and remote work will become the standard way of doing business. Mentor-mentee counseling will become the new form of high-end education, while mental health jobs will be in high demand.

There are many negative predictions as well, from climate actions losing its potency, green energy making way back to the fossil fuels, and the developing world entering numerous wars, with rising antagonism between the United States and China.

Some of these will happen as predicted, some will not, or will go into a completely different direction.

On top of these global predictions I would like to share some industry-specific thoughts.

The part of the travel and tourism industry that will recover first is leisure. Free individual travelers will want to travel as soon as it feels safe again. Some might want to travel even before that, but this is the regular 5% of the early adopters. On the other hand, parts of the industry that will suffer the most are those in the MICE segment. Meetings, incentives and conferences take a long time to plan, and there is a significant reputational risk involved for the companies that organize them, so I think it will take a long while before we see it back to the pre-corona numbers, if ever. On top of that Zoom conferences are taking place daily now, so it is not crazy to assume that portion of the industry that goes online now will never come back.

In terms of price sensitivity, it is likely to expect that the upper-middle and entry-luxury segments to come back first. A lot of the affluent travelers that belong in the category of “high income, not rich yet”, in their late thirties, forties and early fifties, will be leading the rediscovery of traveling. When it comes to mass tourism, I expect there to be a price war across the globe.

Expect 2021 top be a complete mess as well, considering that so many travel arrangement and large events have been postponed to next year.

When it comes to privacy, villas and small boutique hotels will go in high demand, and it is not unlikely that some of the over-touristic, overcrowded destinations will take a longer time to recover compared to the more remote, yet accessible destinations.

We also might see a return of longterm stays, as opposed to many shorter travels that we have seen trending over the past years, motivated by reduced travelling and exposure to the large airport hubs and airplanes.

Most of these predictions are based on something that we call prevention emotions, emotions of safety and security. Let me elaborate quickly. When choosing their holiday and travel destinations, people are driven by promotion emotions, as well prevention emotions, and this is the basis of many marketing strategies put out there. This practice is called “designing emotions”. For example, self-elevation, pleasure and recognition are promotion emotions that lead to thrill, excitement and delight. On the other hand, risk reduction, absence of problem and discomfort are examples of prevention emotions that lead to security, confidence, and satisfaction. It doesn’t take much understanding of the human psychology to assume that in the times ahead travelers might be very much motivated by prevention emotions, still probably keeping an eye on promotion emotions, so destinations that are safe and secure and that properly craft their message to the world will come back earlier than those that keep the same old campaigns as before the crisis.

Finally, where does Croatia fit into this? Croatia is one of the safest countries in the world, andit is regularly revered as one of the safest countries not only in Europe, but the world. Based on 23 different indicators, including ongoing international and domestic conflict, societal safety and security, and militarization, a 2019 study by the Global Peace Index ranked Croatia the 27th safest country in the world out of 163 countries. The United States and the United Kingdom give Croatia the lowest travel advisory level, indicating that travelers should exercise normal precautions when traveling. Croatia is easily accessible from all European capitals, and with its long and in many places still undiscovered coastline is in the perfect position to make a quick recovery, given that our economy doesn’t collapse beyond the point of no return in the meantime and given that the new, appropriate storytelling is devised as soon as possible.

We need to tell the world again stories like the one of Hvar Island literally being a health sanitarium, where with the founding of the Hvar Health Society on May 15, 1868, the first organized tourism in Europe came into being, with tourism based on health and recuperation, rather than historical sites. Or the story of more than 600 wild medicinal, aromatic and honey plant species in Croatia, 120 of which are traditionally used in folk medicine, food, oils, spirits, and more. These are perfect stories to tell, they encompass both promotion and prevention emotions dealing in health aspects, well-being and safety simultaneously.

Let’s see what gets done on a national level. In the meantime, we need to be staying visible and sending messages of well-being to the world.

You can read more on this subject of post-coronavirus travel from Zoran here:

Travel Industry: Keep Communicating and Visibility

Build Scenarios! Be Present! Take Time to Think!

You can connect with Zoran Pejovic via LinkedIn.

March 28, 2020 - The Croatian Tourism Association (HUT) has drafted measures that would help preserve employment and businesses in the tourism sector.

Dalmacija Danas reports:

"As tourist traffic is at a halt, with completely closed accommodation and catering facilities across the country, and growing uncertainty throughout the main tourist season, the largest domestic tourism companies assembled in the Croatian Tourism Association (HUT) have drafted measures that would help preserve employment and businesses in a sector that generates nearly 20 percent of Croatia's total GDP.

Under these conditions, in the fight against the pandemic caused by the coronavirus, it is quite certain that a significant portion of tourism revenue will be missing this year. In such conditions, and because of the exceptional seasonality of Croatian tourism, which in four summer months generates 85 percent of total traffic, it is realistic to expect that the tourism sector will have business problems until spring 2021.

At HUT, we strongly support the Government's primary goal expressed in the presentation of the first set of measures to assist the economy, which is to save jobs and businesses in these extreme conditions. We think this is necessary because only in this way can we make a quick return as soon as the health and market conditions are created.

The proposal for tourism measures is divided into four groups.

1. The first priority is to keep jobs until next spring. For this, we need formal and material assumptions, and we propose the urgent formalization of the 'waiting workers' institute, which realistically reflects the present position of the vast majority of hospitality workers. While on hold, workers should receive a minimum wage of 60% of their net wages, which is otherwise the unemployment benefit, and employers would not pay taxes and contributions since workers do not work. The measure should be secured by next spring when we expect the normalization of business to begin.

2. The second group of measures relates to the payment of taxes and contributions and various fees.

We propose that taxes and contributions and those fees and compulsory membership fees (communal, maritime property, tourist land, water fee...) are not paid until the catering facilities are operational. After work begins, in particular, with the opening of 50% of the available capacities, the mentioned fees are paid in the amount of 30-50% to enable the beneficiaries of these benefits "survive" and have the means exclusively for the necessary functioning. This payment system is valid until 01/05/2021.

That is, we are all aware that this year's tourist turnover will be significantly reduced and it is entirely logical for employers to be exempt from paying such taxes. The delay in payment itself does not make sense, since it is already obvious that there will be no possibility of payment, but it is necessary to preserve employment and business systems until the full business is restarted.

3. The third group of measures relates to the financing of liquidity and the preparation of the next tourist season, therefore, we propose to provide grants and/or to provide favorable loans through HBOR and commercial banks for this purpose.

4. The fourth set of measures relates to reprogramming existing credit obligations for all entities that are necessary for business survival. We have also sent the measures to the Government and we expect them to be considered and adopted through the announced new economic assistance package, which is necessary for the survival of the overall economy."

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March 26, 2020 - To preserve jobs and business continuity in conditions where tourist traffic is completely suspended, Valamar has decided to launch the ‘Pause, Restart’ program, which will apply from April 1 for a minimum of 30 to 90 days, the length of the Government's measure for preserving jobs.

HRTurizam reports that the Pause, Restart program will cover all Valamar employees for 30 to 90 days, which means that there will be no layoffs in Valamar. Also, about 2,800 workers employed by Valamar and Imperial Rab will benefit from Government measures.

All employees who cannot work due to the coronavirus crisis will be referred to the Pause, Restart program from April 1

During the Pause, employees will be provided a salary compensation of at least 60% of the regular salary, but not less than HRK 4,250 net. This measure will apply equally to employees and management, including seasonal and permanent seasonal workers.

During the Pause, the staff and management in charge of crisis management and administration, the maintenance, conservation and facility security staff, as well as the employees who perform communications with guests and partners, will work primarily, emphasized Valamar, adding that the part of management that has to work will be paid up to 30% until all employees return to work. Other full-time employees will be paid regular full pay.

"COVID-19 has triggered a global crisis and at the moment, tourism and hospitality are growing. Temporarily, until the situation calms down, we cannot operate regularly. We are proud of our employees and our goal is that no employee will lose their jobs because of this crisis. Valamar will do its best to get all of our people on a break back to their jobs as soon as possible. The situation is temporary; the business will start again and then we all need to be ready to Restart business. Valamar is a strong and stable company and I believe that with the support of the public sector, our shareholders, investors, partners and employees, we will survive this period and prepare for a quality business continuation,” said Valamar CEO Željko Kukurin.

Following the tightening of general prevention measures by the competent authorities, all hotels and restaurants in Valamar were closed in March.

The Management Board also canceled the General Assembly and, with the approval of the Supervisory Board, revoked the proposal for a dividend payment decision and, upon convening the General Assembly, will propose to retain the 2019 profit in order to increase liquidity and support the measure of preserving all jobs.

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