Did the pandemic impact us as much as we thought it would?
“The Future of Tourism”, a tourism trend report made in September 2021 by Lab8 by Haaga-Helia introduces emerging trends in tourism focusing on hotels, uses of new technologies and innovations in hotels and hotel services and ways of meeting customers’ new needs in their hotel experiences (LAB8 2021, 3). It was evident that this report was written during the covid-19 pandemic and the writers expected new trends that had emerged during the pandemic to affect customers’ needs for their hotel visits long into the future.
Why and how to read trend reports?
Following trends and therefore trend reports is important for customer experience management, since it is essential to keep up with customers’ wants, needs and expectations in order to keep the business concept fresh, interesting and up to the targeted customers’ standards. They can offer new ideas for the hospitality industry in the same way magazines like Vogue do for the fashion industry or Tekniikan maailma to engineering.
The report gives instructions in how to read the report and understand how the findings were gathered and scored. The findings are gathered digitally, based on popularity of different articles and it offers information for example about the age group and location of the people who have viewed the articles in the trend group. (LAB8 2021, 4)
I have been somewhat familiar with trend reports, but I have mostly been interested in the new trends they introduce, and not so much to how the data is collected. Reading this report, I paid more attention to the methods and technology used to collecting and evaluating the trends. I hadn’t really thought about how much valuable information about customers could be collected by looking at their browsing habits.
So, what was trending?
Major trends found in the report were proximity; experiences in personalized accommodation, like person-to-person hospitality companies or unique nature, like stargazing or aquariums; technology, like apps that give travelers information about current covid situation, protocols, and restrictions. Also, social distancing, wellness and safety were deemed important. (LAB8 2021, 8-18)
The report also offers specific examples of new ideas, which include The London Eye Pub’s intimate experience with drinks (LAB8 2021, 20), Atari’s video game-themed hotels in the United States (LAB8 2021, 21), hotels offering sleep-clinic packages or “a sleep spa” (LAB8 2021, 22, 24), modular hotels (LAB8 2021, 25, 28), unique design (LAB 8 2021, 23, 26, 27, 32), eco-friendly hotels (29, 31), post-pandemic inventions to advance customer safety (LAB8 2021, 33-38) and even Hotels.com’s goal to “provide future hotel bookings in space” (LAB8 2021, 30). As with the major trends before, the main trends also with these specific examples could be categorized as covid-related, wellness and experiences.
Did they get it right?
Since it’s now been two years since this report was published, it’s interesting to look back and reflect on how accurate it has been so far. Wellness and unique experiences have been rising trends long before the pandemic, and it is not surprising that those themes continue to be important to tourists and hotel guests.
From my perspective, we seem to have drastically overestimated how much influence the pandemic would have in our future habits. To me, it seems that people returned to their old habits as soon as the covid-virus was deemed to have mitigated into being just another flu virus. I work at an airport, and for most people things like social distancing and hand sanitizing seem to have faded into distant memories. That being said, it’s hard to imagine the demand for wine-delivery or disinfecting robots (LAB8 2021, 36 & 37), let alone hygiene-enhancing plane cabins (LAB8 2021, 34), being anywhere near to meeting the manufacturing costs anymore.
Reflecting on this trend report gives a valuable lesson about how hard it is to predict customers’ behavior in the future, especially in extraordinary circumstances. Trend reports are helpful tools in keeping up with the latest trends and getting ideas if one’s business needs some freshening up, but they shouldn’t be read as something that will definitely come true. Regardless of whether they turn out to be a miss or hit, trend reports are fun to read, because they give a glimpse to some of their time’s more innovative and experimental ideas. Knowing what have been rising trends a few years back, one can try and spot if they might have influenced in their own place of work, favorite vacation spot or local businesses.
References:
LAB8 2021. The Future of Tourism Trend Report. Referred 5.9.2023. https://www.haaga-helia.fi/sites/default/files/file/2021-09/lab8-trendreport-4-2021-tourism_1.pdf