When has the travel and hospitality industry been more front of mind than the last 10-plus months? Whether you’re the business traveler, working from home and driving your family crazy (just ask my husband), the holiday traveler, unsure of whether you should get on that plane to visit friends and family, or the adventure traveler, endlessly researching your next place to explore, the travel and hospitality industry is on everyone’s minds. And while we don’t know exactly when travel will return to “normal,” we do know that CDC guidelines and the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine tells us it’s coming. We need to be ready.

When crisis hits, it’s natural for businesses to shift to survival mode. Conserve cash. Halt product development. Cut marketing. Minimize risk. Some will stay the course. After all, “they” say the companies that come out of a crisis strongest are the ones that stay the course. Others will take this as an opportunity to re-evaluate the business, identify new opportunities and change course. Easier said than done.

Women business owners are particularly vulnerable. “Women typically operate in industries that are disproportionately affected by a recession, tend to run many of the youngest, smallest, most vulnerable businesses and, with schools closed and elderly family members under threat, are more likely to be juggling primary care-giving … while scrambling to save their businesses.”

In challenging times, marketing is often the first expense to be cut. As a marketer, however, I would argue that it’s critical to not only surviving a crisis, but to actually thriving. Acquiring new customers for nonessential products and services may be challenging during a crisis, but there’s no better time to develop relationships with your customers. And you may actually find that marketing expenses have gone down. As businesses cut ad spend, it’s not uncommon for prices to go down.

1. Stay in Front of Your Customers

Your customers know and trust you. They want to hear from you. However, you’ll likely need to adjust your message. It’s important to be sensitive to what your customers are going through. Keep them up-to-date and informed about how the crisis impacts their ability to interact with your product or service. What are you doing to enable them to interact with your brand in a safe way? What are the latest CDC guidelines for safe travel? What safety precautions should they expect hotels to be taking? Stay relevant, timely and on point with your communications.

2. Personalization

Personalization has proven over and over again to be a key component to marketing; talking to customers like you know them, tailoring content and product to their needs, and reaching out through their channel of choice. The use of customer data has come a long way over the past decade in powering this kind of individualization. Consumers may not be booking trips right now, but it doesn’t mean they aren’t researching. Apply that rich data to your outreach and content in order to keep them engaged for when the time is right to book that trip.

3. Make it Easy for Your Customers to Cancel

There’s so much unpredictability with traveling during a pandemic. You’ve already let your customers know you care. You’ve let them know why it’s safe to travel with you. Now let them know that should something unexpected come up that would prevent them from following through with their travel plans, they can easily reschedule. It’s also important for this cancellation experience to be a good experience for them. Remember, every touchpoint with your consumer along their journey matters. Look at a cancellation as a “rain check” for another purchase. Do your best to get them to come back.

4. Reward Loyalty

If you don’t have a loyalty program, this would be a great time to introduce one. If you have one, promote it to both nonmembers and members. I’m a frequent flyer with several major airlines. My lack of flying in the last year will have an impact on my status — preventing me from continuing to get certain perks I’ve become accustomed to. I’ve been assured by several airlines that my status will be maintained through 2021 regardless of my activity in 2020. These airlines further strengthened my loyalty to them. When you invest in further developing relationships with your customers, you will drive loyalty. What do loyal customers do? They spend more with your brand and they tell their friends. Therefore, while the marketing strategy is a customer retention strategy, it may also inadvertently drive new customer acquisition.

Final Thoughts

No one knows for sure what recovery looks like for the travel industry, and we may not see a full recovery (pre-pandemic levels) until 2023 or 2024. However, we will be ready when that time comes by staying in front of our customers today.

Whether for work, pleasure or to just spend time with family, we’re all anxious to start traveling again.