Jen Compton, VP of Innovation and Brand at Delaware North, joins Cheddar Reveals to break down the results of Delaware North's 'The Future of Recreation, Travel & Hospitality' study outlining major changes we can expect to see in travel, hospitality, and recreation over the coming years and how businesses will need to adapt.

Cheddar Reveals

Projecting The Future of the Travel & Hospitality Industry

Welcome back to Cheddar reveals, brought to you by curiosity stream. Now we're in the dawn of an explosion of middle class leisure travel by 2020 by 2040 that is, it, will be well within the realm of possibility that another billion citizens of earth will be jetting off around the world by uh societal shifts into the unprecedented mobile area dubbed the Great Unstick ng. So joining us now to talk more about this is jen compton VP of Innovation and brand at Delaware North. So jen, let's start with talking about this concept of great unstick ng. How will this affect how we live and work in the near future? Sure. And you talked about it a little bit earlier, just the idea of folks not, you know, being stuck at home, they're working now from all different locations, they're extending their travel stays. Um, I work for Delaware North where global hospitality company as you can see them in a sports environment today, but we're in sports travel, recreation, gaming and we commissioned a study to really look into, We're experiencing some of these new changes related to the pandemic, what's going to stick related to that, What trends are here to stay and um yeah, one of the projections we have is that extra billion travelers on earth, I like how you put that they're coming and are we ready? Oh wow! Look, it's just so showing you some of the numbers there, but it looks like a lot of people will be traveling more than ever now. Do you think this has to do with the pandemic and people wanted to get this as we call it revenge travel out of the way, but then just sticking with it and continuing the lifestyle of traveling Yeah. You know, there's a stat that we had, that is 94% of workers that were able to experience some level of a hybrid environment are going to demand that through the rest of their career. So now when you're planning your vacation, uh we used to see it where people really, you know, um we're traveling close to those weekends, right? And now they're coming in earlier, staying later. You know, the idea is they're working on those bookends or you know, why, why not go spend a month somewhere. If you're 100% remote, you can do what you need to do for work in an entirely different country, Perhaps that's a good point. And we've already seen the cause of the boom in Airbnb and verbal going up skyrocketing. So how are these long term travel trends really affecting the hospitality industry and as a whole Sure, you know, you, you spoke of Airbnb and um the share economy is just a, just a huge uh you know, new thing that we've all kind of seen come to bear over the last few years. It really only represents 2% of lodging though worldwide. Um so that will continue to grow, but really it seems like if we have all these new travelers, there's kind of room for everyone, there's different appealing factors of both. I think, um, you know, it's great if you're going to, you know, if you have the ability to work from home and, and you're probably going to want an Airbnb situation where you might have a yard and definitely a kitchen, but there's still certainly, you know, you can't compete sometimes with just the loyalty, the consistency that people get with hotels. So I think there's room for everybody to play. All right, a lot of people are willing to play, so how will other industries be impacted by the sharing economy? Yeah, it's interesting the report, one of the things that stuck out to me, um, there was an interesting concept that almost made you think, geez, why isn't this here yet, what other industries, restaurants, food, you think of these brick and mortar locations and you know, would a chef be maybe hosting you in their own home or your neighbor? The basic great lasagna, why wouldn't you be able to order from them? So, you know, is that I think, you know, we never saw probably the share economy coming towards us in a way that it has and there has to be other areas they're going to be impacted and you know, our goal with this report is to really be looking 10 years ahead and, and trying to think of those things ahead of time to find the opportunity and since so many people are going to be impacted by it, how would you suggest businesses consider these shift trends? Sure. You know what? We, we've kind of taken this report. It's open source, it's on our website at W. R north dot com for folks that want to take a look. We sat down with our leadership and done workshop sessions with futurists. They're really the contributors to the report. Um they've done countless interviews to kind of come up with these hypotheses and the concept is understanding all these forces of change in our industry and then looking at those against the business that you do. So it's really, you know, the answers aren't in black and white for any of us. It's, but it's also not a crystal ball, it's going to require conversations and really talking with people outside of your industry to find those insights. Well, I guess in the meantime, you just travel around and keep talking to those people, enjoy life while you're doing it right? All right, jen compton VP of Innovation and Brand of Delaware North, Thank you so much for your time