By Oswald Timothy Edward & Akmal Adanan

The Budget 2021 RM200 million allocation to the tourism industry hopefully drives the industry players to be more creative to achieve a boost amid COVID-19.

Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture (MOTAC) Datuk Seri Nancy Shukri has much confidence in the government's determination in ensuring the second integral goal, namely business continuity through a number of sensible strategies.

The Black Swan event

The Black Swan event of the COVID-19 virus struck a major impact on international and domestic travel. In other words, a black swan event is an incident that is unpredictable and has widespread ramifications.

According to the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture, losses suffered by the country's tourism and culture industries in 2020 were around RM45 billion.

The significant drop in the number of tourists is attributed to the closure of international borders in response to the spread of the virus. Due to the situation, the tourism industry will need to adapt and introduce new initiatives among domestic travellers in order to keep growing.

The hospitality businesses have to keep their plans in check, but not to expect “business as usual”. The industry needs to introduce new measures that attract tourists while taking their safety into consideration.

The digital travellers

More interestingly, the tourism industry should embrace "Digital Tourism" Virtual Tour packages by using "Augmented Reality" technology for ‘digital travellers’ or tourists. These initiatives push a lot of creativity from the operators but will surely be paid off in the short- and long-term operation.

The term ‘digital travellers’ was coined for the digital generation, the Millennials. The Millennials, or GenZ, are associated with the number 8, the number of seconds that GenZ take to process information, consider what it means and then move onto the next thing that catches their eye.

Within that 8-second window, travel brands’ best bets for reaching this generation of travellers lies in using images rather than words.

In fact, Gen Zs’ brains function fundamentally different from those of older generations. They have learned to process information much faster, but they have trouble retaining that data.

They value social media, but not the kind their older siblings, parents and even grandparents share infatuation with.

The e-generations

GenZs love incognito apps much more than Facebook and Twitter, but Instagram’s popularity with this group remains high. The number of GenZs using Facebook is on a steady decline while that using Instagram is increasing, indicating what marketing and communication with GenZ should primarily be through.

GenZs watch twice as many videos on mobiles as other generations, 70% of GenZs watch at least two hours of YouTube or Netflix per day, and receive over 3,000 text messages a month.

There has been a recent trend of interest in the young generations for three reasons:

• First, young people’s values and attitudes are important for employment, as students, as consumers and as citizens.

• Secondly, it is the youth that set trends in society, what they do today, older generations do tomorrow.

• Thirdly, young people´s values provide a glimpse of the future, as values developed in the formative youth tend to stick into adulthood.

We, thus, must understand these e-generations of GenY and GenZ as they are the new e-travellers with the biggest purchasing power for travelling, so, put pressure on the tourism industry for ‘digital tourism’.

They are the major consumers of social media and expect communication with service providers through the new channels of social media and digital services.

And they want to have fun, preferably through gamification of their experiences. Thus, a new trend in the travel and tourism industry will be to adapt services and experiences according to these new e-travellers and their expectations, demands and values.

To meet the e-travellers, the tourism industry must move away from traditional values of tourism developed for the Baby Boomers in the era of tourism services, and step up the ladder of the ‘experience’ economy offerings.

The industry must embrace the new values of Generation Y and Generation Z in the era of transformative experiences. The next tourism hype after experience production might thus be transformative tourism through transformative experiences.

There is no doubt that we are still in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and the impact of the pandemic is likely to be ceaseless. However, by adapting and reconsidering the practicable options for holidaying, the tourism industry can still thrive.

-- BERNAMA

Oswald Timothy Edward and Akmal Adanan are Senior Lecturers at Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Malaysia.