{"id":2360,"date":"2020-09-29T13:53:38","date_gmt":"2020-09-29T12:53:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/?p=2360"},"modified":"2020-10-01T13:54:49","modified_gmt":"2020-10-01T12:54:49","slug":"coping-with-covid-the-future-of-travel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/coping-with-covid-the-future-of-travel\/","title":{"rendered":"Coping With COVID \u2013 The Future of Travel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In our latest post Steve Hull, friend of Cardiff Business School and Managing Director of Destination Ski, explain how the travel agency has adapted and planned for the future in the face of the COVID-19 global pandemic.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

When your business sells holidays\nweeks, months and even years into the future, some cancellations are normal. Plans\nchange, things happen, and people have to amend or cancel their bookings. But\nhow about when everyone<\/em> cancels? It had never happened before, it was\nunprecedented, but we had to make a plan to find a way through it, and not just\nthrough it, but ready to grow again at the other end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the position I found\nmyself in this March, as the Managing Director of Destination Ski<\/a>, a specialist travel\nagency selling ski holidays to Europe and North America. We had customers away\non holiday who needed to come home, we had customers ready to travel, and we\nhad staff overseas who needed to pack up and return home quickly \u2013 so much to\norganise and so little time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Make a solid plan<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The backbone of any business is a\ngood plan. And any business idea starts with a plan, a foundation upon which to\nbuild. As at many points throughout the life of my business, this was a time to\nformulate a plan. It was important to be realistic, to come to terms with the\nseverity of the situation, and to engage with partners to make sure the plan\nwas sustainable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As well as making plans for\ncustomers and staff, it was of the upmost importance to plan financially too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI went through all our monthly outgoings to identify which ones could be reduced and which could be removed entirely, so this meant a reduction in office space, reduced marketing spend, and lots of smaller reductions too in areas such as telecoms and printing.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In fact, it was quite good to\nhave a clear out of things we didn\u2019t even use but were paying for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With income streams drying up, I\nneeded to ensure our cash flow could sustain the business throughout the\npandemic, which meant working with our bank to provide additional funds which\nmay need to be called upon in the future. This is why it\u2019s important not just\nto plan for the short term, but to identify points in the future where cashflow\ncould become an issue, and implement a plan now to ensure you don\u2019t run into\ndifficulty. It means that we can go into the next 12 months knowing we have a\nlifeline in place in case we need to call upon it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Identify new opportunities<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Destination Ski is a niche travel\nagency, and within the business, we also have another two brands, both of those\nalso in the ski travel industry. Until now, this has worked very well whilst\npeople could travel. However, with winter coming ever closer and travel\nrestrictions staying in place, for the time being, it means we\u2019ve got to look\nfor new opportunities to make sure we can continue to operate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRunning a successful business involves continually thinking about how you can develop ideas, innovating, experimenting, and implementing new strategies.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In our case, we\u2019re looking at how\nwe can transform our business and customer base from just offering ski holidays\nin the winter, to one that offers holidays all year round, so that as soon as\ntravel restrictions are eased we can capitalise on the pent up demand for\ntravel. This comes back to creating a plan, setting short and long-term goals,\nfollowed by lots of hard work to implement it \u2013 we should have our new summer\nholidays brand up and running this autumn, but it will be a long road ahead to\ndevelop it into a recognised travel brand to sit alongside our existing\nportfolio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Focus on what you can<\/em> do<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Right now there\u2019s a huge amount of things going on which are\ncompletely beyond our control, so it\u2019s important to focus on the things you can<\/em>\ndo rather than allowing the constant negative news cycle to get you down. By\nfocussing in on these things you\u2019ll be able to see results rather than just\nworry. I found that whilst the business is quiet it has been an ideal time to\ndo things I\u2019ve been needing to do for a while, like moving a couple of our\nwebsites to a new and updated web server. There has also been an opportunity to\ndelve more deeply into our website content to see where we can make\nimprovements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Look to the future<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

It is impossible to know how the\nresponse to COVID-19 will develop over the next six to twelve months. I know\nthat for my business to thrive when we get closer to what used to be normal I\nneed to be ready with my plan, with my new ideas, and a positive attitude to\ndrive forward once again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI believe business is about evolving, and this is certainly a time for that.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It is definitely going to be an\ninteresting year ahead for the travel industry, as travel restrictions are\nimplemented and relaxed, and I\u2019m sure that as we come out of this there will be\ncalls for changes to the way the industry operates, as well as changes to\nlegislation. So plenty of new things to keep us on our toes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a daunting prospect when you\nhave a business to run. There are so many unknowns. But, on the flip side, it\u2019s\ntime to try new things, a time to change, and with this comes the excitement of\nputting all my experience into practise to make sure we are ready to grow as we\novercome COVID-19 together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Steve Hull is the Managing\nDirector of <\/strong>Destination Ski<\/strong><\/a>\na travel agency built around flexibile ski holidays.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the last few years, Steve has shared his business expertise with Cardiff University\u2019s MBA<\/a> cohorts offering support, feedback and guidance at the annual MBA Business Plan Presentation Evening.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In our latest post Steve Hull, friend of Cardiff Business School and Managing Director of Destination Ski, explain how the travel agency has adapted and planned for the future in […]","protected":false},"author":1860,"featured_media":2363,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1431],"tags":[28,100,1731,1312,1724,116,1725,393,1734,500,1629,1733,1727,1728,1316,1730,1729,737,1726,1732],"class_list":["post-2360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-covid-19","tag-cardiff-business-school","tag-cardiff-university","tag-cashflow","tag-coronavirus","tag-destination-ski","tag-europe","tag-holidays","tag-industry","tag-legislation","tag-marketing","tag-mba","tag-news","tag-north-america","tag-office-space","tag-pandemic","tag-printing","tag-telecoms","tag-travel","tag-travel-agent","tag-winter"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paOfaS-C4","meta_box":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/620\/2020\/10\/Skiing-Image-2.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1860"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2360"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2366,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2360\/revisions\/2366"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}