The COVID-19 pandemic came with a wind of change to the global business atmosphere and tourism was badly hit and still feel the pains of the lockdown and economic upturn that affect millions of stakeholders. In this piece,
WALE OLAPADE sees collaboration as a template to survive the trauma new normal.
The place of collaboration in tourism development in Nigeria needs to be promoted by stakeholders in the country if they will sustain the economic value of the business chain they desire.
However, it is a known fact that the private and public sector stakeholders cannot work in isolation when speaking of sustainable factors that promote sound development of the tourism sector because, even when they both have division of labour, there is a complementary point of elevation that will boost the sustainable goals of the industry.
Though the COVID-19 pandemic was a clog that has slowed down the pace of tourism business globally, creating a vacuum for everyone to rebuild new business confidence through the new normal to upscale the value chain of the industry is required. No doubt, business is picking up gradually for those that quickly embraced the new normal, but the fact still remains that there is no particular template designed by the new normal to work for everyone. So as it is now, it is only the smarter stakeholders that think out of the box that are sincerely benefitting from the new normal.
There is going to be a new normal shock that will hit the industry if there are no measures to cushion the effect of the non-template new normal, as it will not only affect the slow restarter but also create a pit fall for the smarter restarters since the ratio of the former will be greater than the latter and the business/package ratios will also multiply beyond normal for them to handle.
Without apology to anyone, Travelpulse and MICE is bold to say that some in the private sector are still struggling to restart tourism activities as the locomotive exhaustion left behind by the pandemic is still overwhelming some slow starters.
And for those that have taken a bold step to reinvent their ways of operations, it is not yet a party time for them as some are also not finding it easy but for the fact that they are putting up some B2B and MICE show, Travelpulse and MICE commend their doggedness, which is a pride we all celebrate here and there.
But one good area of interest that Nigeria’s are still slow to fully embrace is collaboration, which in this part of the world is a new order, as it is the only lifeline for any stakeholders who sincerely want to, not only remain in business, but also want to sustain it.
Today, collaboration, I mean real collaboration in every sense of it, is what the world has embedded in global business manual to sustain and expand their business in tourism and the earlier the Nigeria private stakeholders take this serious, the better for them.
Such partnerships are most successful at increasing understanding of the values of protected areas and providing social and economic benefits to local communities. They also lead to improved visitor experiences. These partnerships are therefore demonstrating many of the characteristics ascribed to sustainable tourism.
Collaboration occurs when a group of independent stakeholders of a problem domain engage in an interactive process, using shared rules, norms and structures to act or to decide on issues related to that domain.
To compete in the world travel market, a firm must increase its ability to reach, serve, and satisfy its target markets, while lowering costs. Making an alliance is often the most efficient and effective way to reach these twin goals.
As well as involving collaboration among organisations within the destination, destination collaboration can also take the form of individuals or groups of components within one destination collaborating with similar components or groups of components in other destinations.
When you collaborate across teams, you get a better understanding of customers, as well as an understanding to address their needs better. Improved customer servicing leads to customer delight, loyalty and continued profits.
Meanwhile profit-oriented organisations have long realised the many benefits of collaboration as it helps in saving costs through shared administrative expenses; expanding value propositions; improving efficiency and strengthening programmes.
For instance, this comes with collaborative team benefits which encourages problem-solving platform, allow employees to learn from each other and also boost employee productivity rate.
Collaboration also boost the new normal bid by making partners’ overall problem-solving becomes easier, as well as increases the organisation’s potential for change and it creates remote teams that are more efficient.
When collaboration is well-designed, it also gives the parties involve the ease of doing business and it helps in the area of sharing costs and development risks, combining complementary skills and resources, enabling transfer of knowledge between firms, the joint creation of new knowledge and facilitating creation of shared standards.
Travelpulse and MICE is also optimistic that stakeholder collaboration has the potential to lead to dialogue, negotiation and consensus- building on how tourism should be developed. Important partnerships are developed in tourism to ensure the attainment of a high quality product.
The world today sees standards as a step to doing the right business with the right people and to be in that circle in the tourism trade, collaboration has to be a key factor in repositioning the tourism value chain through organised private sector and the public counterpart to work out modalities for the development of tourism-driven businesses and activities.
Though some collaborations are ongoing, yet we ask; how solid are the workability since all what we see is partnership bid and signing of MoU with parties holding the agreement in a published news media. Beyond that jamboree, how many of them have taken the next step to the next level of the collaboration?
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