What if hoteliers, stopped thinking like hoteliers, for a minute?
The world’s changed and for how long, we don’t know. What we do know is that the hands of time don't stop moving, and so our will to reinvent must never stop. One of the longest-standing industries has made its living through selling a product that’s date and time bound. It’s the one thing that’s always been present in the purchase decision, a date. But dates and time march forward, serving as the precipice and inception point of travel. Today’s world calls for time to be considered in a different way, because the hotel industry is not currently in a position to sell time. Instead the only thing we can sell is the promise of an experience.
Unbound by date, hotels need now transact on the basis of tomorrow, because those hands are going to keep moving. And for a better tomorrow, so shall we. What if, free of ‘a date’, the savvy hotel of today transacted more on the basis of a futures model and through a ‘bond' issue. Where a guest can buy a bond today from a hotel, only to cash in that bond in down the line for said experience. The nature of this bond being that it can only grow, from pre-defined terms and conditions set by the hotelier. It could double or tripling in value over a two-year window. Meaning the bond, when cashed in, a year down the line, affords the guest a grander or longer experience due to it being worth twice as much as what they originally paid.
And what if, after a six-month window, the hotel allowed the guest to sell or cash out the bond back to the hotel, to indemnify any risk? Going a step further what if this transaction model could be applied to the corporate sector? Resulting in a company purchasing its travel needs up front for a significantly lesser value.
Why would the industry or any industry entertain a model like this? Because just like those hands, we have to all do our bit to keep the economy moving. And these actions, while they might seem small when compared to the bigger problems at hand, it is the series of small actions that come together to create an impact. We’ve all lost so much, and the bond issue is a means to get transactions going and in the spirit of one purchase leading to another, the bond issue also has the means to give back to local and national charities where a percentage of the transactions can be offset to go to industries that need it most.
We’ve all heard it, the mantra of 2020 “We’re in this together", personally I can’t help thinking that perhaps the best way to say that is through a bond.
Because, it marches on and so will we travel again.