Amity School of Hospitality, Amity University Haryana, Gurugram Organized online lecture on Travelling after COVID-19 BY Ms. Chetna Rawal Sawant – Manager (Leisure Travel Outbound), Thomas Cook India Pvt.Ltd on 7th May 2020.The main objective of this online lecture is to provide education about the effect of COVID-19 on the travel industry & what all necessary changes will occur/follow in post COVID-19 period while touring/travelling in general.
The students were able to understand the lethal effect of COVID-19 on the travel industry & implementation/enforcement of essential strategies in order to revive the travel industry. Also, the students learned about the various safety measures that will be imposed by travel industry on travelers/tourists in post COVID-19 period.
Ms. Chetna Rawal Sawant – Manager (Leisure Travel Outbound), Thomas Cook India Pvt.Ltd Talks about The most immediate and perhaps most visible change will be a shift to touchless travel from airport curbside to hotel check-in. Even with strict cleaning protocols in place, exchanging travel documents and touching surfaces through check-in, security, border control, and boarding still represent a significant risk of infection for both travellers and staff. Automation across the entire sector will become the new norm. Biometrics are already a widely accepted solution for identity verification, and their use will become more widespread as physical fingerprint and hand scanners are phased out. More touchless options will come into play including contactless fingerprint, as well as iris and face recognition. Moreover, technology for touchless data-entry such as gesture control, touchless document scanning and voice commands are already being tested.
According to a survey by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), measures such as visible sanitizing, screening and masks all increase passengers' feelings of safety when thinking about travelling after COVID-19. To date, there is no standard or agreement on the acceptable level of risk for reopening borders or allowing individuals to travel. Until a vaccine is developed, the focus is shifting to assessing the risk of individual passengers. With the passenger's consent, travel companies and airlines could use personal data such as their age, underlying health conditions and travel history to compile an individual risk profile.
A number of symptom-tracking and contact-tracing apps now exist in many countries. Apple and Google are close to finalizing a contact-tracing software scheme for developers to build compatible apps. He mentioned. Total 45 students and 10 faculties attended the session.