canyonwalker | (Reply)

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As a frequent traveler for the past umpteen years I appreciate how hard this pandemic has hit the travel industry. Business travel has slowed to a near standstill, and while leisure travel isn't impacted as sorely as that it's still at a fraction of what it was prior to March.

Back in April time frame the travel industry adopted a "We're all in this together" message, advertising that people should stay home for now and of course would be welcomed back as customers when it was safe and responsible to travel again. They dropped that messaging after a month or two as they realized the cost of actual social responsibility was far higher than the value of feel-good brand equity they were purchasing. The thing is, as we're well into the upswing of the third wave of the pandemic it is today less safe and less responsible than it ever has been!

BTW, governments did rent space in hotels locally to house the homeless and those displaced by the virus. It happened at the local level because, of course, there's close zero effective leadership nationally. It petered out after a few months, though, for multiple reasons. 1) Localities have limited budgets and are prevented from borrowing in times of need by their bylaws. 2) Hotel operators and their paying guests disliked the hardship residents as an undesirable element. 3) As leisure travel started opening in this region back up in early summer, hotels were happy to see the hardship program tapered off while filling their properties instead with regular, paying customers. The programs were curtailed after a few months and not restarted.