WE kicked off the year with a gathering of views and opinions from our community of industry leaders on their outlook for 2021, from their levels of optimism and their plans to get through the year.

Here’s the first collection.

Rajesh Magow, CEO and co-founder, MakeMyTrip:

Q: How would you describe the start of 2021?

Promising, with the vaccine rollout finally

Q: What is your data telling you about the first quarter?

Revival of travel sentiment for leisure segment at least in the domestic travel market. Early signs of ‘revenge travel’ as well.

Q: What is your gut, data and guesswork telling you about how 2021 will pan out?

2021 is the year travel will begin to claw back lost ground. Uneven recovery initially – domestic leading the way followed by international towards second half. Business travel pie might shrink a bit, thanks to online meetings and work from home trends; likely to come back fully in 2022 when Covid cloud is finally blown away with majority of world population vaccinated.

Q: What are you telling your teams/partners?

@Team: Having navigated the 2020 well together, the worst may be behind us. Stay positive to witness us emerge even stronger once we are out of it totally.
@Partners: We are in it together. There is a need to collaborate even more strongly.

Q: Who do you fear for the most in our industry?

Airlines and hotel partners with weak balance sheets, and heart goes out to people losing lobs.

Read the full article here