Don't Sit Idle Because There's Nothing to Do. It's Time to Prepare for the Future: 'Success Secrets' from the 'Top of the Travel Industry' [Business Summer Forum]

【Financial News Jeju=Cho Eun-hyo Reporter】 "I decided to 'prepare for the future because there's nothing to do,' and began to specifically design a 'market reopening scenario' after COVID-19."
Hana Tour CEO Song Mi-seon said on the 18th that the secret to maintaining the top position in the travel industry despite the major crisis of COVID-19 was "being confident that the market would reopen and using the crisis period to reorganize the company's vision and services." 
CEO Song, who was a speaker on the third day of the '38th Korea Economic Association (Hankyung Association) Management Jeju Summer Forum' held at Lotte Hotel Jeju, recalled, "I faced the COVID crisis just a month after taking office, and at that time, almost all sales were 'zero.'" CEO Song recalled, "We endured through self-help measures such as real estate sales and paid-in capital increase, but with repeated variants like Delta and Omicron, no one knew when the market would open, and it felt like 'hope torture.'" Hana Tour, which boasted an overwhelming market position with 1 in 5 users at Incheon International Airport being Hana Tour users, faced an unprecedented revenue cliff due to the COVID crisis. In April 2020, they implemented paid and unpaid leave for all employees, leaving only 300 essential staff, and with a sharp drop in sales, they eventually let go of over 1,200 employees, more than half of the total staff. The 1,100 Hana Tour employees who had gone on long leave returned to work in October 2021, 1 year and 6 months later. It was a transition to a full normal work system.
CEO Song revealed that during this 1 year and 6 months of emergency management, "During the COVID pandemic, we began to reorganize infrastructure such as the next-generation system." They reorganized digital communication enhancement and preemptively established online channels. Additionally, "We concluded to focus on the travel core business, which had expanded into existing business areas such as cosmetics, duty-free shops, hotels, media, and cultural performances." Furthermore, they dismantled the dichotomy of 'package' vs. 'free travel' and introduced a new type of product that removed the weaknesses of existing packages such as early morning departures, group actions, and forced shopping. It was a 'package-style free travel.' "Under the principle of 'removing what customers dislike,' it was a product that removed the biggest complaints: uniform schedules, early morning departures, forced shopping, and optional tours," he said.
CEO Song emphasized that the newly introduced digital communication strategy was also a great help in overcoming the crisis. He said, "Considering that not only the MZ generation but also active seniors over 50 use YouTube and Instagram, we focused on these channels," and "We also created short-form content, live broadcasts, and travel-making platforms to prevent customers from deleting the rarely used Hana Tour application," he introduced.
In this lecture, CEO Song announced that they would begin to expand globally and innovate systems based on artificial intelligence (AI). He said, "The next runner to follow the growth curve of the Korean travel market is Southeast Asia, and Hana Tour is already preparing to enter the local market through the establishment of a Singapore corporation," and "Since the existing travel industry relies heavily on complex manual work and experience, it is difficult to respond with document-based manuals, so we plan to convert tasks into AI based on large language models (LLM)."
ehcho@fnnews.com Cho Eun-hyo Reporter