The aim of this master’s thesis is to investigate how COVID-19 has impacted travel and tourism and how the industries can transform themselves in order to become competitive in ”the next normal”. To do so, we have done a deep-dive on two industries –namely the airline and cruise industry –and by gathering, analysing and interpreting secondary and primary data we have sought to outline how the industries were performing prior to the pandemic, to which extent they have been impacted during the pandemic, and what we can expect the next normal to look like. Thus, the main question that we have set out to investigate in this thesis is: “How is COVID-19 currently changing the airline and cruise industries, and how can industry players reimagine themselves in order to become competitive in “the next normal”?” The present chapter attempts methodically to outline what business travellers –the most impacted airline customer segment –can expect in the next normal. This is done, first, by contextualising the segment, i.e. providing a picture of how the segment was performing prior to COVID-19 and which role it played to airlines. Secondly by using secondary and primary data to explain how COVID-19 has impacted the segment’s flight consumption. Finally, by looking at ongoingtrends and by understanding the needs and wants of business travellers, it looks at how the future is currently forming and will continue to shape. Secondary data shows that, while just accounting for 10% of global airline passengers, business travellers drive up to 75% of airline profits and 50% of airline revenues, and thus airlines are inarguably dependent on this segment to run successfully. The entire infrastructure of business-oriented airlines is built up around serving this segment and their leisure passengers thus function as loss leaders. During COVID-19, the business segment has been impacted more than its leisure counterpart as (1) business everywhere has been moved from the office to peoples’ homes, and (2) because companies do not want to risk the health of their employees. Primary data shows that the future will be increasingly remote, however all indicators point to only the most non-essential business travel to be replaced by video conferencing in the future as there is a broad consensus that trainings, negotiations and conferences are significantly more effective and engaging in-person. Given the novelty and unpredictability of COVID-19, researching this topic has been exceptionally difficult as industry data and forecasts as well as consumer sentiment changes on a daily basis. Thus, this research deck should be interpreted as a screenshot of the situation and how we recommend airlines and cruises to deal with it as of January 2021 while the pandemic is still developing rapidly, rather than a fixed conclusion for solving the managerial problems that have emanated
