April 29, 2020

Our passion towards the work, our customers, remains the same

The lockdown has reinvigorated our passion for work, our commitment to serve. Today as a team we are more connected with each other; more open and forthcoming in sharing our views and plans.

DEV KARVAT | Founder & CEO – India & Emerging Markets | TrawellTag Cover-More

Not much has changed for us due to the lockdown, except that we are indoor, working from home. My schedule remains pretty much the same, with regular meetings with my leadership and team. In fact, I think the lockdown has helped all of us connect more frequently and openly share our views and plans on how to shape our business moving forward. This gives me the confidence that our passion and commitment towards the work remains the same. What has been added during this time is the direct contact with our underwriters to design products that can help travellers during a crisis like COVID-19 and linking it to the business strategy. We have also started weekly employee engagement sessions where we focus on team building and knowledge sharing.

COVID-19 has brought upon us a new world order, with new norms of living and working. The pandemic has fundamentally changed the ways we used to live and work. Working from home is here to stay as the world moves towards a new normal in terms of working and social distancing. It comes with an initial set of challenges like setting up a dedicated space to work at home, dealing with the fluctuation in internet connections etc. These issues are easily resolved and once we settle into work from home, it can prove to be very efficient and cost-effective. In addition, it allows us all to be closer to our families, spend more time together. The lack of outdoor activities is only because of the lockdown. I am sure once that is lifted; people will go back to spending some time outdoors as well, to maintain the balance.

As always, travellers’ safety remains our top priority, we continue to strive towards making travel safer for our customers. We are providing hospitalisation and cancellation benefits to travellers whose travel bookings were undertaken prior to the issuance of the Government of India’s advisory.

COVID-19 has presented the travel trade with its most daunting challenge yet, but we are hopeful that the industry will revive fast. We are anticipating that domestic travel will recover faster and India being a beautiful country, people will soon begin to travel to discover new sweet spots here. In comparison, the international travel market will take a bit longer to revive. With COVID-19 wreaking havoc all around the globe and most of the airline carriers grounded, the travel industry will at least take another 4-5 months to get back on feet. Though things should start improving by September 2020, we expect the regular flow of travellers to resume only by the beginning of next year.

This time is an opportunity to continue to strengthen the skills of the workforce. Further, companies will now succeed by creating a new mix of safe and organized travel products, along with the fun factor in the case of leisure, and proximity to work needs for the business traveller. I believe it is not always about how quickly one can rise from a fall, but how strong one emerges. We, as an organisation, are utilizing this lockdown to ‘unlearn’ and rebuild the business to be more appropriate for the post-COVID-19 world.

We continue to work alongside our underwriters to explore the possibilities of designing products that will be relevant in a post-COVID world. We have sharpened our focus towards travel assistance services that will be relevant for travellers during such distressful situations. We plan to bring to the trade, niche travel assistance products combined with smarter technology. The idea is to enable the industry, as a whole, to instil the faith and confidence back in travel and emerge stronger together.