Hospitality’s Devastating Loss and 11 Other Coronavirus Travel Stories This Week

Hospitality’s Devastating Loss of Talent Should Be Your Gain: Great hoteliers are a different breed with skill sets that are hard to find in other industries. While hospitality has cut talent to the bone, other growing industries can benefit from a very unique suite of people skills, operational acumen, and soft diplomacy. They are worth consideration.

See How the Tourism Rebound Is All But Stalled: Skift Recovery Index: To find the paths out of this crisis, more and better data really is key. We have added more data points to better track the travel industry’s recovery, but it’s not particularly good news.

Rethinking Skift’s 2020 Travel Megatrends in a Pandemic World: Right before coronavirus brought the travel industry to its knees, we released our Megatrends Defining Travel in 2020. We’ve gone back and looked at those trends through the prism of the pandemic. Check out how things have changed.

Oyo Will Lay Off Most of Its Furloughed U.S. Employees: Oyo’s decision to part ways permanently with furloughed U.S. employees is tied to its view that the lodging company’s full global recovery wouldn’t occur until the second half of 2021. It’s a nice gesture to give them stock options, although the jury is out on whether they’ll be worth much in the long run.

Empty Rooms Move Marriott and Other Chains Closer to Flexible Pricing for Corporate Guests: Travel buyers stand to gain from dynamic pricing, but this could just be a quick win if hoteliers take a longer term view of that pricing after a recovery.

Do U.S. Airlines Have a Legal Right to Bar Passengers Who Don’t Wear Masks?: Just wear a mask on an airplane. It’s not that hard, and it keeps everyone safer.

American Travelers Likely Won’t Be Allowed Into EU Anytime Soon: How is that a surprise? Seems common sense is being made official in EU.

American Travelers Likely Won’t Be Allowed Into EU Anytime Soon: How is that a surprise? Seems common sense is being made official in EU.

How United Airlines Is Crowdsourcing Corporate Clients to Rebuild Routes: Admire the simplicity of United Airlines’ plan to rebuild its route network for businesses — but question its accuracy.

Convention Plateau: The Hotel Recovery Can Only Go So Far Without Group Bookings: Unless a vaccine or widespread coronavirus treatment becomes available this year, a W-shaped hotel industry recovery seems likely. But that doesn’t mean hoteliers should accept that fate — alternative revenue streams are out there.

India’s MakeMyTrip Pushes Out Expectations for Profits Even Further Because of Pandemic: One wonders whether some travel companies like MakeMyTrip Group must rethink parts of their business during the pandemic. They may continue to struggle to pay out millions in refunds to customers due to a staccato pace of travel restrictions.

A Choice Hotels Partnership With Colleges Could Lift It Out of Survival Mode: Partnering with colleges and universities to turn hotel rooms into temporary student housing is a viable short-term revenue stream for Choice Hotels, but it still won’t be enough to snap the company back to 2019 performance levels anytime soon.