When Hugo Desenzani, CEO of Peru-based Intursa, looks back at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, it's clear that both his company and most others in the Central and South American regions were unprepared for the crisis.
"I actually vividly remember sitting in a meeting around March 10 and assessing the [expected] damage and saying, 'Well, we only get about $500,000 worth of business out of China, so we can just discount that and go on as usual,'" he said.
Desenzani and many other hoteliers like him have learned to shed that naivete the hard way, noting that if years from now new headlines pop up referencing the possibility of a pandemic "our antennas will be right up."
The potentially devastating effects of a global pandemic on the travel industry was just one of the lessons learned, according to panelists speaking during the "Central and South America Executive" panel during the online Hotel Data Conference: Global Edition. Desenzani, who leads the largest owner of Marriott International-branded hotels in South America, said another of the primary lessons learned is the importance of working with governments given the effect regulations have on the performance of hotels and travel overall.
"It's important to be involved, because what the government decides in terms of restrictions can have more impact on our business than anything we can do," he said.
Moderator Patricia Boo, area director for Central and South America at CoStar's hospitality analytics firm STR, noted that governments' approaches to the overall pandemic, and vaccinations in particular, have a large impact on hotel performance and the various countries in the region are interdependent.
"So, Chile is well ahead on the vaccination rollout and expects by the end of [the second quarter] to have most of the people vaccinated, but the main source market is Brazil, where things are at a different point right now," she said.
Desenzani said the first conversation all hotel companies need to have in their home countries across the region is to show "the impact tourism has in the economy and on job creation" so that they can have a greater seat at the table.
"We have to show what some of the restrictions cost from an economic and tourism point of view," he said. "It's not to say we want people to get infected and die because of COVID, but we're saying some of these measures don't necessarily help from a public health point of view, and they do a lot of harm to tourism."
Iñaki González Arnejo, CEO of Argentina-based hotel brand Dot Hotels & Resorts, said it's important to have as much clarity as possible from governments and to avoid rollbacks as much as possible after reopening markets to travelers.
"What I'm talking about is not playing the game of closing, opening, closing, opening, closing, opening because that really affects [planning] for the hotel industry and for the whole tourism industry," he said. "You can't be closing and opening all the time."
Even if a country or market intends to open, that lack of clarity has a chilling effect on traveler confidence, González Arnejo said.
"So if the consumer doesn't know if we're going to close as a city or nation, that really affects demand," he said.
Franck Pruvost, chief operating officer for midscale and economy brands in Hispanic countries for Accor, said one of the silver linings of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is how it's strengthened the overall travel and tourism industry.
"We have been working more together, even with airlines and airports," he said.
But in the short term, hoteliers are going to have to reorient to focus on domestic demand even in historically internationally focused markets.
After vaccinations, "you see that domestic market is coming back very quickly," he said. "But of course, it's very, very important for the future, and to fill our hotels and our planes, that we have the international [demand] coming back. And for that, we need governments to work together to align."
Desenzani said one thing that has frustrated him, to Boo's point, is the lack of communication and coordination between governments in the region given how they are so reliant on international travel.
"I think the pandemic has turned some countries more nationalist than before," he said, noting it's important to convince people in large source markets, such as Brazil and the U.S., to come back to South American countries as quickly as possible.