Preparing for the return of tourism

"At the onslaught of the virus in February, we were busy dealing with change and cancellation requests," said Blue Sky Escapes Director Krystal Tan. "Many of the trips we spent months working on were indefinitely postponed or canceled."

For a short period, Blue Sky focused on wellness staycations, but then social distancing measures kicked in. Blue Sky shifted again to provide virtual experiences.

"It was definitely a big shift for us to pivot from a predominantly outbound travel company to pretty much an events programming company with the virtual experiences," Tan said. "But we found this to be the most effective way to continue engaging with and growing our community."

When restrictions began to lift in July 2020, the company went back to offering staycations. It has arranged about 850 staycations and the future is beginning to look brighter.

"Domestic and foreign staycation bookings have picked up a great deal since February 2021 and we are also starting to receive requests for overseas trips for travel in 2022," Tan said. "This is a huge contrast to 12 months ago－I would say there has been a more than a 100 percent increase."

The company is starting to see requests for trips to places with more relaxed quarantine measures such as Maldives, Sri Lanka and Dubai.

"We've most certainly observed an upward trend based on the number of requests we have received in the last five to six weeks," Tan said. "The big question is how quickly things will bounce back, with vaccination plans being rolled out at different rates across the globe. It is a given with most of our clients that they will not travel before being vaccinated."

The entire global industry is pinning its hopes on the billions of people around the world that are eager to travel. If that pent-up demand is freed up, the super-boom the industry needs to recover could come to pass.