SURVIVING AND PLANNING FOR RECOVERY IN INDONESIAN TOURISM POST COVID-19
by Dewi Tamara 
The topic of this webinar is focusing on how to recover in tourism industry post covid-19.
The presenter is Mr Panca Rudolf Sarungu, an alumnus of MM Executive and CEO of Prista Group, which holding of RajaMICE.com, Bulanmadu.com, RajaLARI, Liburan Magazine and ITTA Foundation. Currently he is president of Binus Business School Alumni Association. The moderator of this event is Ms Dewi Tamara, Deputy Head of Program of MM Executive and organized by Marketing Communication Division, Binus University.
The pandemic of Covid-19 was the worst ever for Indonesian tourism. This is probably 10 times worse than Bali Bom in terms of lost in total tourism revenue. As it mentioned already, this pandemic is unpredicted, unpredictable, and we never prepare for such contagion. The impact was suffered not only by private hotel chains, but also entrepreneurs and organizations and association related to tourism industries.
The sustainability of having business in tourism depends much on is survival and planning strategy. The hotel industry should redefine their sales strategy. One of the most important is not to implement or should avoid massive discount that will impact the brand in the long term. The massive discount would impact not only the brand but also the middle until the end customer. Other strategy is to save any marketing budget for new initiative. For example, the new initiative is focusing on online marketing to a better positioning and branding.
The professional in tourism also could refocus on existing customer. You can maintain the relationship by showing empathy to existing customer, calling online, do some zoom meeting, and so on. You can also consolidate the post pandemic plan with the team so they will be still optimistic and positive.
In the time of work from home, the tourism business can think to reimage the business operation model, further, to review the portfolio and offering, and also align new customer behavior. Some hotels also switch the function of their hotels into quarantine place for Covid-19 patients and also rent the rooms to offices that needed in Thailand.
They can also do reimaging the new business opportunities, shift to online momentum, where perhaps it was never really discussed before. The pandemic can bring the world to change to a new discovery, a new normal that we never thought before.
The webinar successfully attracted more than 150 participants and actively asked questions and discussed the next agenda from government concerning the employees on the tourism sector. One of participants that joining the session came from Germany.