By : Jaimon Mathew and Vikas Singh Baghel

Tourism in Context of COVID – 19

The COVID -19 pandemic has had a huge impact on the tourism industry due to the travel restrictions as well as down fall demand among travelers, as almost all countries have restricted travel to contain the spread of COVID -19. The united Nations World Tourism organization estimated that global International tourist arrivals might decrease by 58% to 78%
in 2020-21. In many of the world cities, planned travel went down by 80-90%.

Tourists have experienced themselves, through their loved ones or through the shared experiences of other significant disruptions and health- risks in their travel and booking plans.

Social distancing imposed by COVID -19 includes actions such as, reducing social contact, avoiding crowded places, or
minimizing travel. Social distancing can significantly impact how people experience and evaluate leisure and travel activities like hiking, outdoor activities and nature-based tourism or even personal services like Spas, Dining, Concierge services. Social distancing or better physical distancing may influence tourist’s perceptions of health hazards, insecurity and unpleasant tourism experiences.

Tourism Businesses have been racing to ensure the safety of their employees, customers, brand image and cash liquidity. To restart tourism, companies are redesigning experiences to feature smaller groups of tourists, outdoor activities or private experiences complying with COVID 19 guidelines.

Let’s start with a famous quote by Robert Collier “Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.” That has been the story of Madhya Pradesh Tourism. Over the years and through the pandemic we have ensured that we keep ourselves updated with the new disruptions in marketing and yet have never forgotten our basics… which is knowing what our patrons want and their preferences. We have over the years developed our product and services around these and have been able to successfully run with them and deliver.

We have taken the brand MPT to domestic and International markets and like a good students, have been inspired and learnt new strategies and impressed our stakeholders across the world. Madhya Pradesh has recently been voted as the Third best Value Destination in the World and this is like winning an Oscar in tourism! Also, Madhya Pradesh is now a Leopard State besides being a Tiger State already. Again, going back to basics our core objective has been to educate and promote Madhya Pradesh to our people at home as 90% of our travellers are domestic. The state has so much to offer in terms of adventure, wildlife, pilgrimage, leisure, MICE, etc. the list only keeps growing.

The past year has been testing and it made us even stronger in our resolve of constantly evolving as a hospitality brand. During the pandemic when the entire industry was severely hit, we at MPT ensured that we immediately think out of the box and come up with alternate revenue models also ensuring that we stick to our core competencies. These innovative ideas and offerings have given us enough impetus and we have been able to deliver to our patrons even during the peak of the pandemic. The constants behind our branding and marketing are that we stick to our USPs for example our hospitality brand MPT has now been re-branded as MPT Hotels and Resorts and now all our properties which are 70 plus properties across the state are now been re-branded and each property has been prefixed with MPT for example, MPT Jungle Resort, Kanha or MPT Palash Residency, Bhopal. The idea behind this was to let our stakeholders know that we have various lodging options in terms of Residencies, Resorts, Deluxe Hotels, etc. to name a few. This allows them to choose their destinations along with their stay and it has resulted in enhanced booking experiences for our stake holders with higher brand recalling as well.

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Arrival Protocols of COVID-19

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Kitchen Protocols

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Sanitizing Hotel Premises

Our latest offering and target are to
promote Madhya Pradesh as a MICE destination and bring more foreign travellers to the state. We are working in this direction and improving our infrastructure and facilities to cater to the international market. Our recent offering The Minto Hall (An International Convention Centre) with world class amenities is a spell bounding heritage building restored in its original glory has already witnessed an international event i.e., AATA NEXT (American Adventure and Travel Association). There are two more convention centres coming up at Sanchi and Khajuraho which would be state-of-the art convention centres. We are also inviting private participation to come and run these convention centres and help us reach the larger audience and objective.

MP Tourism is also using the Social Media to reach out the young and now a very informed generation. Now, the feedback is instant and we are extremely serious about the sentiment analysis of our stakeholders. This analysis also helps us in re-targeting and also optimizing our content on various social media platforms. Now, the content is more evolved and specific and as they say “specific is always terrific!”. Perhaps, that is the reason that we have been able to successfully launch our various initiatives and receive such tremendous response from our stakeholders.

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Sanitizing Rooms

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Sanitizing most visited area’s

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Sanitizing restaurant

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Sanitizing most visited area’s

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Sanitizing lift

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Image Showing the Tourism in COVID protocol

Image courtesy : with thanks from Internet for Social Awareness

With the advent of the lockdown it was a challenge for us to maintain our brand recall value.Our patrons had no way to enjoy our services. At that point of time we introduced the ‘Fusion food home delivery app. The idea was to make available the
food made in MP tourism hotels to our patrons. This was launched in Bhopal. Being a government organisation it was easier for us to win the trust of the people regarding the protocol followed by us for hotels hygienic cooking.

Cinemas have been also been closed for quite some time now making an entertainment void. Taking one step ahead, Madhya Pradesh Tourism has diversified itsself in making a drive-in cinema in Bhopal. Keeping in mind the new normals which have become a part of lifestyle in the post covid world. Social distancing is a must and what could be a better way of entertainment than a drive in cinema, in which a person meant to sit in his/ her car and watch a movie which is being played in a very big screen in some open ground. This made possible in the premises of MPT Hotel Lake View Residency in Bhopal accomodating around 80-100 cars.

The Government and destinations have been providing stimulus packages and interventions like subsidies, deferrals of payments etc. to ensure the viability and continuity of tourism firms and jobs.

So, we can conclude by saying that Covid 19 resulted in numerous Socio- cultural, Economic and psychological impacts on various tourism stake holders, some of them for years to stay. Consequently, the pandemic has created-
“a ‘fertile’ new CONTEXT”.