COVID was a major blow to the tourism industry, which was forced to reinvent itself. Sometimes to save what could be saved, sometimes to reinvent more surprising and sustainable models.
While the air transport sector was severely impacted by travel restrictions and had little room for manoeuvre apart from the development of cargo business and the organization of flights to nowhere to entertain people and keep in touch with its fan communities, the hotel business had a little more leeway. In this way, he was able to attract a clientele in need of remote work spaces.
Reinventing the destination to save the tourism industry
But the good ideas of the sector’s industrialists will only be enough to hide the misery, and at some point it’s going to take a boost at a higher level to save the sector. An impetus that can only come from the destination, not to say the public authorities.
Indeed, as long as we’re not on the road to a return to (almost) normalcy, some people are trying to reinvent the reasons for visiting a destination in order to save the local players and the country’s economy. Sometimes in a very opportunistic and short-termist way, but also sometimes to position themselves on longer-term trends.
In the opportunist series, is there any better reason to travel today than to get vaccinated when it’s not possible or easy at home?
Vaccination tourism on the rise
In the United States, more and more people unable to get vaccinated in their own state have decided to seek vaccination where it is available. So the states with the best vaccine supply, or where vaccination is best organized, attract residents from other states. According to Bloomberg, nearly 40,000 people have gone on ” vaccination ” trips to Florida to date. However, restrictions being what they are, it is still not possible for a foreigner to go and get vaccinated in one of the American states where vaccination is easiest to access.
When we see what individuals do spontaneously, it’s not far to try and organize it into a business of its own.
According to “The Telegraph”, tour operators are offering the most affluent Britons the chance to be vaccinated in Dubai or Abu Dhabi, relatively easy-to-reach emirates. The package includes first-class travel, the vaccine and accommodation in a luxury residence between the administration of the two doses for the modest sum of $70,000.
Similar offers are beginning to appear for more modest budgets, not only for the two Emirati cities, but also for India, although in the latter case it’s hard to know whether the packages offered to Westerners aren’t rip-offs.
However, if vaccination tourism is ethically condemned and sometimes even illegal, the fact remains that it’s a business that’s starting to emerge. For the happy few at first, but who knows what the future holds.
But one thing is certain: Dubai has already vaccinated almost 40% of its 10 million inhabitants, and the time is not far off when the country will have vaccination capacities widely available to foreigners. And when you consider that, as an international connecting hub and tourist destination, the more people vaccinated, the faster its business will take off again, it’s not hard to imagine that the emirate won’t hesitate to play its part in global vaccination, or even use it as an argument to fill hotels and planes.
More exotic is what Cuba has to offer…
The weather’s good, it’s nice and, what’s more, “we offer tourists the chance to get vaccinated”.
More ethical and perhaps more sustainable is the remote work travel business.
Countries that want to attract remote workers
The pandemic has prompted millions of people to experiment with remote work, whether willingly or unwillingly, and while, as we have seen, hotels are seeking to ride the wave, other countries have decided to play the same card, but at their own level.
Here again, we find Dubai offering a one-year work permit for people wishing to work remotely from the shores of the Persian Gulf.
The proposition is as simple as “want to mix business with pleasure in Dubai? With our one-year virtual work program, you can live and work by the beach.“.
Because working remotely doesn’t mean working from home, it means working from wherever you want… and this is encouraging more and more people to move their homes.
What are the eligibility criteria?
- Passport valid for 6 months.
- An employment contract and a salary of at least $5000 per month
You can even enter Dubai on a tourist visa and then apply for a “remote work” permit once you’re there.
The cost is $287, plus medical insurance valid in the Emirates. Those accepted then have access to all resident rights, including schooling, public services…and vaccinations.
The Emirate’s target is clear: it’s not about attracting “Betty the accountant”, but executives with comfortable purchasing power who can easily work from anywhere and will spend all their purchasing power here. We remind you that there is no income tax in Dubai.
In any case, Dubai is pulling out all the stops with its video and media campaigns.
And it works.
Working remotely from Dubai, Costa Rica, Croatia…
But Dubai is not alone in its desire to position itself in this highly lucrative niche to revitalize its economy.
Costa Rica has just announced its intention to attract North American remote workers who can’t stand the harsh winters in New York and Toronto, or who can’t stand the rents in Silicon Valley.
The same applies, albeit on a more modest scale, to the island of Madeire in Portugal, which will be offering co-working spaces to around a hundred remote workers.
As for Croatia, it has just launched a work permit similar to that offered in Dubai, with tax exemption and a logical ban on offering one’s services to local businesses.
Remote workers: the future of business travel?
Business travel is predicted to come to an end or to be drastically reduced. We’ll just have to wait and see: as someone said to me recently, once everyone has a cool head, the most extreme positions will fall once a business has lost a contract to a competitor who has come in person.
However, it’s clear that we’ll have to wait and see before business travel returns to its former levels. But what if the nature of business travel changed?
With the ability to work from anywhere now an aspiration of part (not all…) of the population, what if the new “business travelers” were “normal” employees who simply wanted to change their place of work on a regular basis? Travels may be less frequent, but longer and further afield.
This is one of the trends for 2025 identified by the very serious Skift magazine. I’d taken it with a grain of salt, but on second thoughts I might reconsider.
Image : Dubai by Ashraf Jandali via Shutterstock
