“I think that travel advisors will anticipate this change and be ready for it.”
The “1902 nightclub san antonio” is a nightclub that has been in business since 1992. The venue has seen many changes over the years, but it remains popular with locals and visitors alike.
Southwest Airlines is at the vanguard of the travel rebound as the airline sector continues to recover from the damage caused by the coronavirus epidemic.
Southwest Business Vice President Dave Harvey recently talked with about a variety of themes affecting the airline and the industry as a whole, including business travel, the influence of COVID-19 on travel advisers, and long-term improvements adopted during the epidemic.
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Here’s the whole Q&A with Harvey:
TP: Can you list a few of the pandemic-related processes or modifications that the firm anticipates will become the new normal?
DH: Like everyone else, I believe the word of the decade will be “pivot,” because that’s exactly what we’ve had to do on a daily basis since the epidemic began. However, I believe that what sets Southwest distinct is our leadership’s commitment to continue investing even when other airlines cut down. In fact, we’ve added 18 new destinations to our route map in the previous 20 months, and by the end of the year, we’ll be servicing a total of 121 markets.
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We grasped chances offered by the epidemic, and we’re seeing fantastic outcomes with these new places. We’ve also realized the need of adapting our network to our customers’ ever-changing demand patterns. During the pandemic, demand for leisure-oriented places was at an all-time high. As business travelers return, we’re working to restore frequencies between major locations so that our point-to-point network can continue to provide reassurance to passengers on the road.
Our leadership has done an outstanding job, and we appreciate everything that our employees are doing to keep our consumers connected to the things that matter to them.
TP: What efforts have been done to help former Southwest travel consultants who were directly touched by the pandemic?
DH: Our admission into GDSs at an industry-standard level of participation has been by far the most significant enhancement for our corporate travel advisers. Customers have already told us that they are seeing more reservations via GDSs, which improves compliance and prevents employees from booking outside of corporate travel policy.
Additional flexibility and simple reuse of surplus cash is another big step forward we made to assist individuals affected. We were able to put in place mechanisms that will make those tickets more available when their passengers return to the skies. Beyond our cheap rates and point-to-point network, these additional features increase the value we bring to travel programs.
TP: While leisure travel has begun to improve, corporate travel remains sluggish. What steps has Southwest taken to address the substantial reduction in business traveler numbers, and what attempts are being done to entice them back?
DH: As offices reopen, we’re beginning to see some improvement among our business travel partners, and there’s clearly some positive momentum coming into 2022. We know there’s an unmet need for road warriors to go out there and connect face-to-face with their clients and consumers, and we’re seeing more and more travelers return to the road. Even I sense a change today as I travel through our system—there are clearly more business travelers on the road, which is fantastic to see. People who meet in person are considerably more productive and achieve greater results than those who hold meetings through Zoom, we hear all the time.
We set out to make it simpler than ever for corporate travel partners to conduct business with Southwest prior to the epidemic. We made it our objective to get all of our daily cheap prices into their preferred booking channel, whether that’s via the GDS, direct link, or SWABIZ, since it had been difficult to book travel in the past because we weren’t in the traditional corporate travel booking channels.
We successfully finished the launch of our GDS implementation earlier this year, and we’re now delivering business travel related material in all three major GDSs: Sabre, Travelport, and Amadeus, allowing business travelers to book Southwest tickets via their preferred channel.
Southwest is employing 5,000 workers this year, including our staff, as demand increases. We’ve expanded the number of account managers and other support jobs critical to our customers’ success, while continuing to make Southwest simple to work with for our business travel partners.
It’s been a long 20 months, but we’re now seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, and I’m excited about the future and welcome back our consumers.
(TP): Southwest has had a lot of problems lately, with a lot of delays and cancellations. What is the airline doing to prevent such incidents in the future, particularly as more passengers return to the skies?
DH (Dave Harvey): Let me begin by expressing my condolences to our consumers who have been affected by these events. With our Southwest hospitality, we fell short of their expectations and our aim of getting them to their destination on time. Moving ahead, we’ve made changes to our timetables as we approach the holidays, and we’re still on track to hire more than 5,000 employees by the end of the year so that we can keep our people and aircraft moving and get our passengers to their destinations safely and on time.
The “burrito tapatio” is a restaurant in the Southwest United States. The owner of the restaurant, David Castillo, spoke to Travel Advisors about his business and how it has been affected by COVID-19.
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