If you are like me, you probably have many Google alerts set for travel, hospitality, tourism, etc. Given that, perhaps you have noticed the disparity of the news impacting our sector.

On the one hand, a particular destination or segment is booming, yet a similar one is struggling.

Some markets, routes, and countries rebound, while others have difficulty recovering guests. In some places, they brag about beating their pre-covid visitation, and at the same time, a very similar destination is complaining that they cannot seem to get off the ground.

So why is there so much disparity? Why have things not just picked up where we left off in early 2020?

There are a few possibilities:

1) Are people still concerned about traveling and catching COVID or some new variation or strain?

2) Has the time in isolation re-trained the market and consumers to the point where they view the importance of travel differently?

3) Have people used their time during isolation to get educated on other destinations and effectively widened the scope of interest, hurting the well-known and legacy trips and benefitting the new?

4) Is the economic strain having an impact and changing choices?

5) Has the popularity and flexibility of remote work shifted consumers' calendars?

6) Have the destinations that continued to market seen a payoff compared to those that practically ceased operations?

Based on my conversations and the surveys I have had access to, I believe we have a strange mix of all of these questions happening. So imagine a case where items 1 and 4 are at play - that family will respond very differently than one where 3 and 5 are the dominant factors. As you read the list, think of your friends, colleagues, and family members, and I am sure, as you put faces with situations, you will start to see this phenomenon with your own eyes. And this nuanced complexity is the reality of what is happening.

That means that we, as experts and providers have a much different scenario before us than we might have had pre-COVID. We may face new obstacles with previously loyal customers. We may be getting "hits, visits, and click-throughs" from different demographics, and the old web analytics formulas need re-assessed. We may be facing competition from holidays or vacations that were never even in play before. None of us have the time or resources to rebuild our business models to adjust to this new normal. However, all of these shifts and added nuance require us to be flexible and to focus more than ever on the fundamentals:

– Excellent customer service and interaction always wins

– Great content that resonates with travelers will always be consumed and shared.

– Expertise is vital, but we might need to educate teams on other destinations to widen the net.

Undoubtedly, we will continue to see ups and downs in our industry; successfully navigating these will continue to require our thinking about the consumer and at least attempting to understand the world from their perspective.