So how do we ‘survive and thrive’ beyond C-10?
We must adapt and move through the phases of our current reality together and engage our airport communities and destinations. These strong relationships we form now will carry us into the recovery phase and ensure a more united destination.
Objectives of Recovery Squad:
- Ensure everyone is on the same page and engaging (important to look out for eachother as human beings as well as professionally)
- Sense of weekly communications to replace monthly networking events
- Collect two-way information between the greater destination and the airlines/airport and government
Who should be on the taskforce?
- Select key local opinion leaders two can act as a two-way communication portal between the recover taskforce and other operators (ensure a mix of visitor info centres, local tourism organisations, tour operators, accommodation, chamber of commerce and airport representatives)
- Airport members should pass info on about what is going on in the greater destination onto the on-airport community (ie. Ground handlers, retailers, car rental companies, security and airline staff).
Example focus areas:
- Establish a barometer for tracking recovery with forward occupancy rates.
• Encourage operators to submit each week their forward occupancy rates to the airport/LTO for the next 3 months (ie. 10% April, 20% May, 20% June).
• Collect this data each week and keep it aggregated and confidential.
• By tracking this each week from now to the end of the year, we can have a focus on watching as a group how industry recovers and share this info regularly with key partners (such as airlines and councils/boards). - Build a recovery strategy ready for execution
• Including an events calendar
• Short-stay itineraries ready to roll - Share what individual businesses are doing to ‘steady the ship’ and build stability among their teams to maintain productivity at these uncertain times.
• How do we keep teams engaged and centred and feel ‘destination connectiveness’?
