Agility in the air transport and tourism sectors: A worldwide vision

Covid-19 pandemic had an unprecedented impact in air transport and hospitality worldwide. Facing an unexpected and brutal slowdown in economic activities, those sectors are heavily shaken, with million jobs at risk and the prospect of a sustained long-term slowdown in tourism growth. Air transport and tourism actors are demonstrating their agility when it comes to easing the recovery and anticipating the future tourism landscape. Through short-term actions, the whole tourism industry had to constantly adapt their operations to comply with fast-evolving health measures. They are redesigning the customer journey and focusing on communication to regain travelers' confidence while ensuring staff safety. All airports have had to act in a reactive and agile manner, anticipating the evolving protective measures which would need to be implemented to deal with the crisis, ensuring the health and safety of the passengers and staff, and maintaining the facilities in operational conditions to restart. Airlines are concentrating their operations to support the vaccine supply chain. In parallel, sustainability, health and safety, the balance between professional and personal activity and experiential tourism are shaping a new paradigm for the medium-term horizon (2025). The result obtained aims at demonstrating that these concerns appear to be new business opportunities requiring the tourism industry to boost innovation to set the new future new standards. This paper illustrates the industry's agility by describing the short- to medium-term views of and actions put in place by airports, air navigation service providers (ANSP) and hotels.