DECRYPTION
It's a black summer for tourism professionals. The online accommodation reservation platform Booking.com announced on Tuesday its intention to cut up to a quarter of its workforce due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It thus succeeds Airbnb and TripAdvisor, two other symbols of tourism 2.0, which had already announced clear cuts in their workforce, 25% in both cases there too. And the traditional players are not spared since the hotel giant Accor will also cut 1,000 jobs worldwide after suffering a net loss of 1.5 billion euros in the first half.
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Cascading job cuts
Booking, which employs some 17,500 people across the world, did not give the exact number of positions affected, saying details will be communicated "in the weeks and months to come" but recalled that "the Covid crisis -19 devastated the travel industry ". "We continue to feel the impact with travel volumes which remain considerably reduced," the platform said in a statement. Even if, locally, the tourist season is held well in France, in general, people travel much less, especially internationally, the backbone of online platforms.
One more banderilla which bends a sector already strongly impacted by an almost non-existent start to the year. TripAdvisor was the first player in tourism 2.0 to suffer the economic consequences of the coronavirus. At the end of April, the restaurant and hotel rating site announced that it was cutting 900 jobs. In the process, Airbnb, the world leader in rentals between individuals, separated from 2,000 people. "We are collectively going through the most painful crisis of our life," said CEO Brian Chesky at the time.
Anticipate the future of tourism
"If we only take hotels in France, we will have a loss of turnover for the year 2020 of around 40 to 70%. Even if the summer is not as catastrophic as expected, with an activity 10 to 20% lower than last year, this will inevitably have a strong impact on hotel groups and platforms like Booking ", analyzes Vanguélis Panayotis, president of MKG Consulting, a firm specializing in tourism. And it could be long: the airline sector may not return to its pre-crisis level before 2024.
The present is therefore difficult, but these platforms are already anticipating the future, which promises to be just as complicated. "We need to restructure our organization to match our expectations for the future (of the travel industry)," Booking said. “The expectations and habits of consumers will change. We can already see that they are trying to give meaning to their trips this summer, they are moving towards more rurality, authenticity, heritage. adapt, "says Vanguélis Panayotis.
Beyond the summer season, the fear is now on the return to school. Because it is not only vacationers who support the tourism sector: "business trips represent 70% of the annual turnover of hotels in France", recalls Vanguélis Panayotis. But between the countries where the virus is still very much alive and those where the beginnings of a second wave are being felt, professionals are today unable to say when activity will return to 2019 levels.