Deepti Singhal
New Delhi: Online travel aggregator MakeMyTrip sees MICE (Meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions) recovering from at slowest pace from Coronavirus-induced crisis in the travel and tourism sector due to adoption of remote working and virtual meetings.
“MICE will be the slowest recovering segment in events and corporate travel due to the acceptance of remote working and virtual meetings. Solo individual trips and weekend getaways are currently bringing recovery to the industry,” Deep Kalra, CEO, MakeMyTrip.
Travel and tourism sector is among the worst affected sectors from the pandemic and may be the last to recover from the crisis. A RBI survey released in July had said that aviation, tourism & hospitality, auto, MSME and construction were the five sectors that had been hit hard by the pandemic.
“Within the tourism sector, about 90% of the respondents mention that the prospects of recovery within the sector in the next 6 months appear bleak. The aviation sector appears to be a close second, with about 85% of the respondents categorising the future prospects as bleak,” the survey conducted during April-May said.
Travel and tourism sector has seen massive retrenchment and salary cuts as businesses turned unviable. While a large number of small players shut shop, the organised and bigger players cut salaries to save on operational cost.
Top deck of MakeMy Trip took 100% pay cut while senior members saw their take pay package being slashed to the extent of 50%. Others saw their salaries cut by 10%. The online travel firm retrenched 10% of their workforce.
MakeMyTrip’s Kalra said that India is doing a great job in coming out of the slowdown, but the need for better regulator remains.
“We must not let monopolistic powers establish a controlled environment in the market and exercise their powers for dominance, said Kalra.
“The days of pandemic reminded us of existential crisis and bootstrapping in its full form. Europe has done a great job in not giving an unfair advantage to giant-sized companies, and thereby the consumer interest has not been comprised, “he noted during a webinar interaction hosted by Dr. Ajay Data, founder of Made in India app VideoMeet.