The Pandemic Reset : The event that reminded the world how to live again…
Written by Kaitlyn Skov
The Great Shift…
In timely coincidence, while constructing this article, the World Health Organization and a list of major countries have formally announced the end of the Covid-19 public health emergency. As of May 11th, 2023, we have miraculously “emerged” from the global COVID pandemic after more than three years in a state of global crisis. For the first time, the term “post-pandemic” may feel appropriate in conversation.
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A lot has happened in the wake of the global pandemic. What once felt permanent is now fluid, what once seemed novel is now the norm; nothing is exactly the way that it “was” before COVID. This also applies to the psychology of modern consumers. With the singular negative focus of the pandemic receding, attention returns to the normal, albeit significant, challenges of the moment, including a global conflict with Russia and Ukraine and a global economic recession, to name two. For many of us, our core values and holistic outlook towards life has shifted.
YOLO, carpe diem, la vie il faut la vivre…
whatever your preferred phrase for expressing it, post-pandemic we have all been faced with the reality that “life is short”. The impacts of the pandemic and the current global climate have driven a major shift in the way consumers are choosing to navigate life ahead. With no guarantee of permanence, consumer outlook, values and demand have shifted in focus towards maximizing life and our lived experience in this world.
What’s really driving consumer behavior & demand…
With a new outlook on life comes new values for navigating it. With a focus on maximizing our lived experiences, consumer values have shifted in focus towards Connection, Meaning, Experience, Wellness & Positivity. What it boils down to is, we as consumers want to have positive experiences that allow us to feel connected to the world, each other, ourselves and to a higher purpose while creating good in the world around us. We want to live our best lives, be our best selves and create positive impact along the way. All of these desires are translating into macro market demand and opportunities for industries like hospitality to step up and join consumers for the journey ahead.
What does it mean to be “well”?
Wellness, what once was a generalized highly prescribed notion of health and wellbeing, has evolved into a much more inclusive and personal narrative in the lives of consumers. Wellness is not incremental or supplemental, but holistic in concept and practice; it is a personal, multidimensional journey shaped by each individual’s perception of feeling ‘well’. Whether it be fitness, nutrition, work-life-balance or mental wellbeing, consumers are shifting lifestyle preferences and consumption towards the pursuit of a more personal definition of “wellbeing” that exceeds the constructs of past generations. Wellness is evolving to include a 360 degree perspective incorporating physical, mental, emotional, social and even, spiritual wellbeing channels. People are moving beyond concepts of “how I look?” to “how can I be healthy enough to experience the world as long as possible?”.
Wellness has taken a front-row seat in the core values of global consumers in recent years. As hospitality creators, leaders and providers, we must expand our pre-existing understanding of ‘wellness’ to view it as a lifelong practice and journey, not as a standard service or base amenity within our concepts and programmes.
The question we need to be asking our customers isn’t “what fitness equipment do you want in the gym?”, but “how can we support your personal journey to wellbeing?”. Wellness within hospitality must evolve into a holistic full-sensory experience within our guest journeys.
Defining Wellness :
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Highly Personal : Individually defined experience definition, requires personalization and greater optionality
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Multidimensional Journey : Holistic experience definition, inclusive of physical, mental, emotional, social and spiritual components of wellbeing
Consumers want to…
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Live longer → physical
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Look better → physical
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Feel & be better → mental, physical, emotional
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Feel connected & part of something bigger → spiritual
La vie il faut la vivre (life is for living)...
Slowing the Rolling Stone.
The pandemic opened the floodgate to an evolution of flexible work, life and accommodations. For digitally-enabled workers, the world became their oyster for choice of work and home base. And while this newfound freedom was thrilling, the lived realities of a nomadic lifestyle have quickly emerged.
The trouble with being able to work and live almost anywhere is exhaustion. The continual travel and accommodation coordination, the jet lag, the costs, the limited suitcase wardrobe…the reality is, constantly moving and setting up your life in new places is exhausting. I believe these realities and other major value shifts will slow the nomadic pace, yielding a slower, yet still mobile lifestyle for digital and neo-nomads.
As consumers begin to prioritize health and wellness, sustainable travel and community connection over thrills of country hopping and beach bumming, we can expect the nomadic lifestyle pace to calm down. The bulk of nomadic consumers will go back to rooting into community more and uprooting home lives less frequently, likely continuing to live flexibly between multiple cities annually as they integrate into multiple communities that are not geographically connected. Community, stability and the associated benefits, such as a feeling of belonging, will slow the pace of the modern nomadic lifestyle.
Instead of jumping to a new city every few months, we will see nomadic consumers begin to extend their stays and reduce their movements to a handful of cities (~ two to three) per year compared to the previous patterns of greater transience and frequent relocation. Aligned with this shift, nomadic persons will consume flexible stay aparthotels like traditional apartment platforms, taking advantage of the inclusive services, social programming and built-in comforts. As this consumer group normalizes the ‘all-inclusive’ experience of these hybrid residential platforms, they will develop greater expectations of premium inclusive services and outlets and become desensitized to the premium rent associated with them. Aparthotels and similar accommodation platforms will realize longer flexible stay periods, premium rental rates and subsequently less “tenant” turnover in desirable markets.
The greatest takeaway here is, don’t go overboard catering exclusively to digital nomads or to the extremes of the perceived ‘digital nomad lifestyle’. Like most things, the pendulum is due to swing back closer to center from the initial extremes seen in the pandemic era to a slower, still fluid nomadic lifestyle segment.
Net Neutral to Net Positive.
The definition, practice and value system of sustainability is actively evolving. Perspective has shifted and sustainability is at the forefront of consumer outlook. Consumers are becoming more aware of their impact while on their journey to personal fulfillment, leading them to think bigger and broader to consider the greater good of people and the planet in their lifestyle and consumption choices.
What once was a ‘net neutral’ attitude is quickly evolving into a ‘net positive’ outlook towards our individual and collective environmental and social impact. Travelers are trading in jam-packed multi-city short itineraries for slower travel choices that benefit people and the planet. Choices that subsequently provide them with the deeper, more authentic experiences they so desperately crave. The conversation has shifted away from ‘leave no trace’ to ‘leave it better than we found it’ in regards to the people and places we visit and communities we live within.
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Sustainability is more than an input / output, action / reaction concept, it is also a feeling, a felt experience. In addition to creating positive impact in the world around us, we as consumers also wish to ‘feel’ the benefits of our positive lifestyle choices, to experience a deeper internal sense of reward. Being sustainable is becoming less about ‘how we look’ doing it and more about ‘how we feel’ contributing towards something positive and bigger than ourselves. Consumer focus is moving beyond appearance and towards driving real impact that can be felt.
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I believe we will continue to see consumers shift from seeking the external rewards and recognition provided through avenues like social media to pursuing the internal experience of “self reward”; a more powerful and longer lasting benefit received from doing something meaningful and aligned with our set of core values. Self reward directly contributes towards our personal fulfillment.
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The pandemic has fueled a future for greater consumer-driven sustainability. As people shift their lifestyles and consumption towards ‘living life to the fullest’ we will see them seek more opportunities to experience self reward and fulfillment in exchange for their sustainable choices. If businesses were to take away anything, it’s driving sustainable consumption is a matter of creating a highly valuable exchange with your consumer through the means of felt and lived experience value that offers high levels of self reward.
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Bringing it all Together.
As we invest in our personal wellness to live better and longer lives, we equally are investing in consuming and participating in experiences that make our time here worth living. The notion of ‘experiencing everything I can, while I can’ is front-of-mind for consumers today and, at the root of this mindset, is a desire for authentic connection and meaning.
Despite the concept of “authenticity” and “localism” being grossly oversold in recent years, there is no love-loss or reduced desire for the concept of real, genuine, connective experiences in our lives. Consumers continue to channel their finite resources (time & money) into experiences that provide them the opportunity to find true community and expand their understanding of the world. So much so, they are going off the beaten path to find them.T
ravelers are foregoing “traditional experiential destinations” for smaller, ‘less touched’ locales in search of genuine sources of culture, real local people and inimitable lived experiences to light the fire in their soul. They no longer wish to be prescribed destinations or experience packages, instead desiring discovery; the thrill of the journey and the hope of finding something that connects them to others, this world and possibly, to a higher purpose all together. Current generations are in great pursuit of meaning. In an effort to live life to the fullest, there will be a retraction from highly commercialized and digital experiences.
Increasingly, consumers are venturing off the beaten path to discover these genuine experiences. For travelers, this will include secondary and tertiary cities in pursuit of unique cultural hubs and wellsprings, while local consumers will increasingly show demand for more intimate and intentionally curated communal platforms and programming that enable them to find connection, perspective and purpose near home. We no longer wish to reserve holidays and travel breaks for opportunities to ‘live life’; we want to live life to the fullest every day, even when at home.
Of all the changes and revelations the pandemic has brought to our world in the last three years, one of the greatest may be the reminder for us to live life to the fullest. The pandemic has inadvertently changed the way we navigate day-to-day life, shifting our focus towards pursuing personal wellness, positive impact, meaningful connection and experiences more than ever before. This shift in consumer outlook and values has subsequently altered the trajectory of market demand for industries such as hospitality, travel and wellness, positioning them for a renaissance period post-covid.
Despite significant global economic stress, the hospitality market has resisted and rallied showing strong demand for airline, hotel, travel, wellness, and other premium lifestyle services. Air passenger demand in 2024 is projected to be 4% above 2019 pre-pandemic demand with ICAO showing total air travel demand rebounding strong at 55.5% growth YOY from February 2022 (1) despite a continued reduction in business travel. In step with growing air travel demand, hospitality is also defying market expectations with RevPAR exceeding GDP growth in the current economic cycle, out performing both technology and retail sectors (2). With such strong market signals, hospitality and travel are positioned to not only weather current economic headwinds but emerge stronger on the other side of 2023 and 2024 versus pre-pandemic levels.Hospitality and travel industries are positioned in the direct path of these four major market trends.
Understanding and incorporating the five key consumer demand drivers of Connection / Meaning / Experience / Wellness / Positivity into the guest experience will become key to brand engagement and loyalty in this new chapter of consumer values and demand. So, appropriately, the greatest guidance here for hospitality and travel leaders is, carpe diem; seize the (opportunity) today.