The growing number of those who are vaccinated in the populations of European nations and the bilateral agreements between the states regarding traveling can revive the sleeping sector of tourism. Even though hotels and other accomodation providers could host guests during the pandemic but exclusively those who were either on a business, medical or education trip; the target group of the sector will probably become active only by the summer of 2021. The European vaccination card (which is expected to arrive in the first half of June) could establish the awakening of tourism throughout the continent so we’d like to take a look at the aspects that are worthy to plan our accomodations’ preparation along for the awaited reopening.
The possibility that the European vaccine card won’t be available for those who have been vaccinated with any of the Eastern vaccines could very well hold back the revival of the sector. Traveling from Central-Europe to Western-Europe would be very difficult for a lot of people; however, this could give an advantage to Hungary (and mainly to Budapest) because here people get vaccinated with Russian and Chinese vaccines too, which could easily mean that the government will accept those in the case of tourists as well.
Budapest will not only be a good destination for tourists because of the presumably easy access: the relatively low prices (which is going to be even more relevant in the current situation) and the wide range of cultural, gastronomic and other services – so the things that attcracted people before the virus – are still preserved, but in addition, the city will be one of the hosts for the European Championship this summer.
Short-term accomodations could obtain a dominant role in the reopening of the sector; not only they offer the opportunity for safe, contactless check-in but it is likely that the first wave of tourists will be of younger people who prefer Airbnb over hotels anyway. Airbnb’s site can also help the providers in case they need to check if the guests have vaccine cards: sending the card online can prevent the risky contacts while in the meantime providers won’t have to obtain an expensive device.
The numbers show that approximately half of the Airbnb apartments that were providing their services are missing from the market and it’s hard to guess how many of those who left will come back. In addition to cleaning the market this also means that after the reopening the competition won’t be as tense as what the providers are used to. It seems that the best option regarding the pricing is to stay conservative and try to wait out; since cancellation policy is quite lenient because of the virus, it doesn’t seem reasonable to fill up our calendar with low-priced reservations just to have most of them cancelled. Our advice to the providers would be that they should try to preserve the value of this segment of the sector while waiting for the reestablishment of the market.
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