With our industry at a standstill, some of us coming out of lockdown and some of us still confined to home, this is our blog for you – it’s a way to share stories within our community, to form solidarity and foster a sense of belonging.
Fighting tooth and nail in Berlin
With Berlin in lockdown, our team is working from home, and I’ve travelled back to Cologne. It’s a weird time for everyone, all of us wrong-footed by the sudden turn of events across the globe. As business travel shuts down and people work from home, our bookings have obviously taken a hit.
In the short-term, I’m fighting tooth and nail for Spacebase. Together with our entire network of bookers, space providers and partners, we’re finding solutions. It’s a process, like anything, and it takes stamina and creativity, but we’re coming up with new strategies, ideas and test out every angle we can come up with and we have a strong motivated team to put them into action.
Now is not the time to let up, for me it’s the time to keep pushing. So we keep in touch, we do company-wide calls every morning and on Fridays, we still hang out after work for an online beer. We’re a resilient bunch and we keep each other laughing.
Although the future is uncertain, I’m also using the time to think strategically about where we need to be in six months, in one year. What will the business travel and MICE industry look like post-corona? If behaviour will change then we need to be far-sighted enough to recognise this and stay agile, so we meet new demands and develop new opportunities. Finding clarity, making progress and giving guidance to everyone around throughout the uncertainty is what helps me personally to stay on top and mentally healthy.
The passion thing: Resilience
Travel is about taking steps into the unknown and discovering something inspiring along the way – exposing yourself to new adventures breaking with your own old habits. You can’t know how it will turn out in advance. It’s scary but it’s the passion for the unknown and the adventure to break rules and build something new that got me into starting my own business, and I want to keep harnessing that to bring change to the MICE and business travel industries.
I think now is the time more than ever to rethink what we have been doing so far but what I am learning throughout these times as well is: Resilience is equally important and it’s the relationships and partnerships that you build across the years that’ll get you through these times. I’m passionate to not let those down and help out where possible so we all get through this.
Note: We will be running this blog for as long as we need to, to get us through this. If you wish to contribute, please send your essays to Siew Hoon. Send images too, it’s your story.
