One industry that has been hit the hardest by the pandemic is travel. Be it airlines, be it travel agencies and others. Already during the month of March newslets were announcing possible bankruptcies from airlines. That however didn’t end up materializing. Why? Travel is one of those necessary evil in my opinion that are inevitable. But then again, it makes sense to wonder why do people still take the risk to travel during the pandemic and what does that mean to business at large.
During the month of August (2020), I had to fly to Houston, Texas through Chicago. In my mind, I expected all airports to be almost empty with a handful of passengers. What surprised me was that inside airports, it was business as usual. If one has been to the Chicago airport, it is one of the busiest airports in the world, the expectation was just a couple hundred people in the airport, what surprised me was realizing that indeed thousands of people were arriving and departing, almost as in normal times. What made me wonder: Where are these people going? Don’t they know that we are in the middle of a pandemic?
It took me some time to pose the same question to myself, where am I going and why? That awakened me in realizing that as much as the world is so interconnected, we humans don’t just depend on one another, but we also depend on being able to move from one location to another. Reflecting on our decision to build a travel e-ticketing service for travel agencies, it was a bright moment for me to realize that we are indeed building something that people will potentially depend on.
The world is so globalized, regionalized, etc. Not only goods and services have to be transported from one location to another, but those goods and services have to be produced and delivered and that requires the involvement of people. On the flight from Houston to Chicago, I was seated with one gentleman who was narrating how for him, the pandemic period is business as usual. He works for a company that contracts with Airlines to maintain IT systems and his job involves nearly 100% travel. During the Pandemic their workload increased and he hasn’t been able to sleep in his bed for a long time, he is always traveling from one airport to the next airport to a hotel then to the next airport.
In addition to those who have to travel for work, there were others who were traveling for other reasons. One lady was relocating due to her new work assignment. Another gentleman was traveling to visit a sick family. Those are just a few who were brave enough to speak loudly when the conversation arose. But it is true that everyone on the plane had a good reason to travel and though technology can help, all of that couldn’t be accomplished with just a zoom, skype or google meeting.
What leaves me to conclude that indeed travel is an essential industry that we have come to depend on and though surely life can keep on without travel, it would be impossible to keep the same quality of life without travel. We at Standard Gateway have been building travel eTicketing and eRouting Systems, my experience was a testimony that we indeed choose to solve the right problem. Thank you for reading and we hope to have you one time using our eTicketing Platform. We are indeed living in such interesting times of what would be interesting history.
Ideas in the article are written for blogging, entertainment and recreation purposes only, this is not a research or scientific publication, quote at your own risk…I am not a professional writer or a journalist or an economist for that matter!
The article was written primarily for Wallas’s upcoming blog wallasplanet.com while in the process of building Standard Gateway. Visit our platforms for more information about what we have in store for you. www.standardgateway.com, edrivingschool.org, www.nationalexamination.com
