#but it goes double and triple since the pandemic and quarantine started | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kingstylesdaily · 3 years

Text

What the 2021 Grammy Awards Will Look Like

Artists including Billie Eilish, BTS, and Taylor Swift will perform in a circle of five stages with masked crew at the center — in a ceremony that first-time showrunner Ben Winston calls “part Grammys, part Abbey Road studio session”

Ben Winston is exhausted. The television producer, who moved from the U.K. to Los Angeles six years ago to start The Late Late Show With James Corden, is a week away from executive-producing his first Grammys telecast. “I literally had two hours of sleep last night,” he tells Rolling Stone via Zoom.

On Sunday, March 7th, the Recording Academy revealed a slate of performing artists for March 14th’s 63rd Annual Grammy Awards that includes Billie Eilish, BTS, Taylor Swift, Cardi B, and Harry Styles. But while those names are on the lineup, Winston knows nothing about live TV is ever set in stone — especially in the time of a pandemic —so he’s been spending his days double- and triple-checking plans, waking up at 4:30 a.m. dry-eyed and restless. He’s worked to make a show “with heart,” he says — one that “doesn’t feel isolated, quiet, or alone.” He also had to take extra steps to ensure the three-and-a-half hour show, which will not take place at the Grammys’ usual home of the Staples Center, is Covid-safe for performers and attendees. Despite all that, he appears remarkably enthusiastic and alert.

Here’s what viewers next Sunday can expect from music’s biggest night, according to Winston: a multi-stage, audience-free show that highlights the year’s creative triumphs, social justice movements, as well as Covid-19’s impact on the arts. Winston hints at several “unbelievably powerful” performances on the slate, adding that the Grammys “absolutely are acknowledging what’s happened” in the country in the last year.

Winston, who in 2018 co-produced Bruno Mars’ well-received live show at the Apollo for CBS, also wanted to highlight independent venues, which are the “lifeblood of this industry” and a launchpad for emerging musicians — so the Grammys will feature guest spots from owners and workers of iconic American venues, including L.A.’s Troubadour and Hotel Café, N.Y.’s Apollo, and Nashville’s Station Inn. “I drive past the Troubadour on my way home from work every night,” Winston says. “It’s a significant thing for me when I look at it all boarded up. I always think, ‘When those boards come down, this will be over.’ That will be the sign. That will be the day where it’s like, ‘We got through this.'” Winston realized from his conversations with venues that many of them put on their last shows on March 14th, 2020, meaning the Grammys will mark the one-year anniversary of the shutdown.

Employees will come on camera to “tell us a little bit about their venue” and present some of the awards. “So, you’ve got, like, a bartender at a beautiful, independent venue — and she’s giving out Album of the Year to these megastars,” he explains. His goal is to acknowledge the people who work tirelessly to keep these stomping grounds afloat and have recently lost their jobs. “Those venues are made up by the bartender and the security guard, the manager, the box office person, and the cleaner at the end of the night.” He hopes to remind people of the importance of supporting local venues again when it’s safe to do so.

Originally, the Grammys were scheduled for January 31st, but organizers announced a move to March right after the new year. Winston says he felt American morale was at a low point in January — between political insurrection, an impeachment trial, and Covid-19 running rampant in Los Angeles — and it “didn’t feel right” to put the show on in the middle of that. The Recording Academy and CBS, which exclusively airs the annual show, both supported his decision to postpone. “I can now do everything that I wanted to do in my best-case scenario for this year,” he says of Sunday’s show.

Sunday’s location is an undisclosed building in Los Angeles, but Winston teases that the new venue is “massive,” “magical,” and “the biggest building I’ve ever been in indoors.” “I don’t want it to look like I’m criticizing Staples, because it’s the most amazing venue,” he emphasizes, sharing that he’s open to bringing the Grammys back to the arena in the future if they ask him to. While he does believe that Staples is a safe place, he says he wanted to go above and beyond to make even the most-skeptical participants feel undoubtedly safe.

A team of Covid safety officers oversaw the production set-up, and artists will enter the stage from different directions to minimize contact. Each artist also has their own backstage area. The space “allowed us to build an entire world,” he says.

The show will involve five stages of the same size and shape, four of which are for performances and one of which is for presenters. Stages are organized in a circle, facing one another, and crew members will work from the middle of the set. “People will perform while the other three or four artists on their stages watch, applaud, and enjoy. As soon as that one finishes, the next one goes, the next one goes, and the next one goes. Every 45 minutes, you change out those stages, and you bring another four megastars into the room,” says Winston, who was partly inspired for the “part-Grammys, part-Abbey Road studio session” setup by British shows he watched as a child, including Jools Holland and TFI Friday.

It’s going to be a “bespoke night of music that I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to repeat,” Winston says. “It’s about taking a camera into a room, and making an amazing musical moment by filming it quite simply and elegantly.” Performances, which started being planned in April 2020, will be a mix of live and pre-recorded — a fully live show would involve too many crew members moving sets and risking close contact — but the whole thing is intended to feel completely live. (Winston challenges viewers to try and guess which sets are pre-recorded; he designed them to be difficult to tell.)

To help plan the sprawling, immersive show, Winston brought in a suite of collaborators including co-executive producer Jesse Collins, who produced The Weeknd’s Super Bowl halftime show; co-executive producer Raj Kapoor, who handled creative direction for various artists on the last seven Grammys and produced Vegas residencies for the likes of the Backstreet Boys and Mariah Carey; producer Fatima Robinson, whose expansive background in creative direction and choreography landed her the Black Eyed Peas’ 2011 halftime show and Kendrick Lamar’s 2016 Grammy performance; producer Misty Buckley, who handled production design for Kacey Musgraves’ 2020 Christmas show; talent executive Patrick Menton from Dick Clark Productions; Corden collaborator Josie Cliff; and Super Bowl halftime, Olympic ceremony, Oscars, and Emmys director Hamish Hamilton, who Winston describes as a “legend” he’s admired since he was 14 years old. (David Wild, who has written for the Grammys since 2001 and became a producer in 2016, is the only person returning to his role.) Winston also points out that artists were heavily involved in designing their own performances.

Rather than have cameras pan over empty seats and an awkwardly small stage, the production team decided to reinvent the visual format with the five-stage setup. The pandemic’s limitations, coupled with the advantages of new faces coming in with fresh perspectives, helped them refrain from thinking in terms of what the Grammys had done before, he said.

For the most part, Covid-19 didn’t force too many changes. It did give Winston a lot of anxiety.

“There’s been so much uncertainty with what you’re allowed to do,” he says. Changing international quarantine rules made him question whether certain performers could fly in, while health guidance keeps fluctuating: “Every time my computer or phone dings, my first instinct is, ‘Oh, God, what’s gone wrong?’ I don’t know if that’s ever been my mentality before.”

While all the performers are confirmed and currently Covid-free, “you never know, one of their girlfriends could have Covid and have to quarantine, it’s all just bonkers,” Winston says. “There’s one artist that may, in the end, not be able to make it here due to rules of the country they’re currently in. There’s one immigration issue that we’ve got left.”

The show does not have replacements on hand if anyone pulls out — it’ll just cut that performance out.

Above all, Winston wants the 2021 Grammys to focus attention off of dire times. “I want people to be able to watch the 2021 Grammys in 2040 and go, ‘Wow, what an amazing show that was,’ and not go, ‘Oh, that was the Covid year, that’s why they had to do that,'” he says. “I think that’s what we could achieve if we get it right on Sunday.”

via RollingStone.com

#kingstylesdaily #Harry Styles #hs: grammys 2021 #March 2021

127 notes · View notes

lady-divine-writes · 3 years

Text

Kurtbastian one-shot - “Carolina in My Mind” (Rated PG)

Summary: Things get a little spicy when Sebastian decides that Kurt and Blaine are going to start doing TikTok challenges... in part to exact revenge on his boyfriend for covering him in glitter and posting photos on Instagram. (1845 words)

Notes: It's not as lurid as the summary makes it sound XD Makes a reference to an earlier quarantine one-shot 'All The Glitters'.

Part 67 of Outside Edge

Read on AO3.

"We're doing TikTok challenges now!?" Kurt groans, sliding to a halt in front of his boyfriend, arms crossed over his chest before he comes to a stop.

Sebastian beams, flashing Kurt his iPhone screen with the app already open. "Ah. I see you got my message."

"Aren't we already living through hell? Do we have to add humiliation to the mix?"

"You're one to talk! If you get to cover us in makeup and glitter and post photos on Instagram, I get to do this!"

"But that performance makeup contest was hosted by the ISI," Blaine points out. "What merit does a TikTok challenge have?"

Sebastian watches Blaine glide to a stop beside his boyfriend and pulls a face. "Well, Doubty McDoubterson, tons of people join TikTok every day, including figure skaters. You two were worried about staying in the public eye during the pandemic. This will be great visibility for us within the skating community."

"A-ha." Kurt shares a skeptical side glance with Blaine. "Now, why don't you tell us why we're really doing this."

Sebastian gasps, stumbling back as if punched in the face. "Kurt! I'm wounded! Deeply wounded! I'm being completely honest here! I'm only thinking of you guys, working hard to keep your names in the mouths of... "

"Before you say another word," Kurt interrupts with a finger raised, "may I remind you that you have a five o'clock sesh riding on this answer."

Sebastian's mouth hangs open, caught around the next word. But a beat later, he snaps it shut. "Fine. We're doing this because we've been on lockdown for about ten years and I'm bored to tears!"

"Nice," Kurt says, "seeing as you've spent all of quarantine with us."

"Will you be partaking?" Blaine rushes in before Sebastian can shove his foot any further down his throat. He's not being entirely selfless, but he'd rather not admit out loud that Sebastian's plan is a decent one, ulterior motives aside. Blaine has a TikTok account and has wasted plenty of precious training time scrolling through clips. Sebastian is right - a lot of figure skaters post on there, even some big names in their sport. It's a better platform for it than Instagram. If they pull this off, they could become TikTok famous, and that wouldn't exactly hurt when they make their comebacks.

"I am." Sebastian wiggles his camera in front of their faces. "I'm the cameraman."

"Of course," Kurt mutters under his breath. "So what's the challenge?" he asks, eager to get this over with, hoping he doesn't regret it too much later. "It is a skating challenge, right?"

"Of course it's a skating challenge! In fact, you guys get to perform your routines... " Kurt stares at his grinning boyfriend, waiting for the shoe to drop. And it does when Sebastian picks up a small paper bag off the boards and holds it out to them "... after you've eaten this pepper. There's one in there for each of you."

"I guess it's too much to hope it's a bell pepper," Kurt remarks as Blaine takes the bag and opens the top. He reaches a hand in and pulls out a bright reddish-orange vegetable the size of his thumb. Kurt recognizes it right away, his eyes going wide at the Carolina Reaper pinched between Blaine's fingertips.

"A little bit, yeah," Blaine says.

"What th---? Aren't those things illegal?" Kurt asks, on the brink of turning and running, leaving his friend behind to suffer the consequences.

"Nope. They're perfectly legal," Sebastian says. "And they won't cause any permanent damage. I checked."

"That's so nice of you."

"Come on! This'll be fun!"

"For you! You're running the camera!"

"I've got you guys. Look! I brought you some milk for after," he says, producing the smallest, middle-school carton of two percent in existence. How he expects the both of them to share that, Kurt doesn't know. It's probably part of the schtick, Kurt thinks, to cap off the hilarity - the two of them fighting over seven ounces of milk with their mouths on fire. "Also... " Sebastian deliberates when he feels himself losing ground, running through options in his head he hopes Kurt might jump at so he can get his TikTok "... I'll let you pick the next challenge. Then you can be the cameraman."

A malicious grin spreads across Kurt's face, but Sebastian squashes it with the stipulation: "But remember - whatever you make me do, Blaine has to do, too."

"Don't I get any say in this?" Blaine asks.

"No," Sebastian answers without looking at him.

"Well, do I get a turn at choosing?"

"Maybe... provided Kurt agrees to my conditions."

Kurt glares at his manipulative ass of a boyfriend, putting him on the spot in the name of social media currency. But what the heck? This could be fun. Plus, turnabout is fair play. He'll get Sebastian back.

Oh yes. He'll get him back.

Besides, Kurt isn't a stranger to spicy foods. His dad has put plenty of red and green gremlins, each residing on different ends of the Scoville scale, in that disastrous chili he makes every fourth of July. How much worse could eating this one raw be?

"Fine." Kurt snatches the pepper out of Blaine's hand but doesn't bring it anywhere near his mouth.

Blaine, on the other hand, goes all in, grabbing his pepper out of the bag, popping it into his mouth, chewing like crazy, and then swallowing, probably in the hopes that it would hurt less if he did it fast, like pulling off a Bandaid. Then he skates off.

His plan doesn't work too well though. Thirty seconds into his backward crossovers, his face scrunches. He puts a hand to his forehead, squeezing his eyes shut, cheeks flushing beet red before Kurt's eyes. "Jesus Christ! I can't see!"

Kurt fixes steely eyes on his boyfriend, filming and giggling like a fiend as Blaine attempts a triple Axel and singles it, arms flailing when he tries to fan his mouth at the same time.

"I'm picturing a Speedo," Kurt says as he prepares to drop the Reaper into his mouth. "An embarrassingly tight Speedo, seven gallons of honey, an angry beehive... " He carefully places the pepper on his tongue. His salivary glands kick into overdrive when its waxy exterior makes contact, but he can't persuade his teeth to bite.

"Ooo," Sebastian coos, provoking him. "Blaine covered in bees? That's going to be hilarious! And I can't wait to see his face when he finds out it was your idea. But what are you going to make me do?"

That does it.

Kurt's teeth clench inadvertently, catching the pepper as it rolls off his tongue and pummeling it to bits between his pearly whites. The burn washes through his mouth, spreading in an instant with the obliterated pepper sitting for too long on his tongue.

"Shit!" he yelps, swallowing what remains whole. He coughs violently, almost puking up his lunch. "Shit shit shit!"

"Don't die," Sebastian teases. "Not for TikTok."

"Nice to see you have priorities," Kurt growls, overcome by a sudden urge to get as far away from his insufferable boyfriend as his skates can take him.

Now he has to pull this off so he can rub it in Sebastian's face.

Remembering that Blaine has a head start on him, he forces his feet to move. A swiftly blossoming headache completely erases his new routine from his brain so he begins improvising, starting with the opening of his last Regionals piece. He opens with a pancake spin.

Big mistake.

Crouching low over his bent leg as he spins forces his mouth closed, everything from his gums to his cheeks aflame.

"Nope!" he sputters. "Nope nope nope!" He ends his spin prematurely, hacking as he settles into backward crossovers.

These are worse.

Since he's pushing into the air with his back, none of it hits his face, depriving him of relief. He catches sight of Blaine skating as fast as he can with his mouth wide open, preparing to enter another jump. He performs a double toe loop, then another, then another. Kurt doesn't understand. Blaine doesn't perform doubles in his routine. He's beyond that.

Then it hits him.

Blaine can do a row of doubles faster than he can perform consecutive triples. He's using rotational inertia to cool his face.

It's genius.

Kurt launches into the air, stringing together three of the most lopsided double Salchows he's ever landed. And he barely lands them at that, overestimating his edge and nicking his toepick. He gives up on his choreography altogether, performing whatever move he has to to shove ice-cold air into his mouth. Element by element, Kurt's routine devolves until his goal becomes keeping his mouth from bursting into flames.

He can't remember the last time he flubbed up this badly. He and Blaine probably look like drooling dogs doing the most, but his throat burns so badly, he couldn't care less. Kurt's nose runs like a faucet, but nowhere near as much as his eyes, which he has the hardest time prying open.

He decides to skate blind, praying he doesn't collide with Blaine, whose blades he can no longer identify on the ice. By the time Kurt strikes his final pose, he's puffy-eyed, sweating like no one's business, with his lower jaw hanging to his chest, wheezing as he sucks in mouthfuls of cold air. He can't hear much for the ringing in his ears, but he suspects Sebastian may be laughing his ass off.

Why did he agree to this again?

"How did I do?" he asks, skating back to his boyfriend, trying not to touch his tongue to his lips, or his lips to each other.

"Meh. You've done better," Sebastian replies, replaying the video over and over, snickering at choice scenes.

"Thanks, coach," Kurt seethes, wondering how well Sebastian would skate if Kurt shoved one of those peppers up his nose.

"At least you fared better than Blaine."

"Why?" Kurt pants, scanning the rink through the narrow slits of his swollen eyelids. "What happened to him?"

Sebastian jerks a thumb over his shoulder. "Took himself out of the running before his second Axel attempt, the poor schlub."

Kurt peeks over Sebastian's shoulder and spots Blaine, lying on his stomach, tongue pressed flat to the ice.

Kurt makes a face. He doesn't blame the guy, but still.

Yuck.

"Blaine? Honey? That's not a good idea."

"Yeah, weirdo. We have milk."

"I 'as saving da 'ilk for 'urt," Blaine explains, not moving his tongue while he does.

"Oh!" Kurt sighs, pressing a hand over his heart, overdoing the swoon because he knows how much it will irk Sebastian. The jerk deserves it. "That's so sweet!"

Blaine smiles. At least it looks like he does.

Sebastian grimaces. Great. Upstaged by a boy who looks like he just Frenched a patch of poison ivy. "Yeah, yeah. Cavity inducing. Get your ass up, Anderson. You're just making it worse. Besides, you're burning a hole through my ice."

#Kurtbastian #sebkurt #sekurt #sebastian smythe #kurt hummel

28 notes · View notes

oh-my-garments-shopp · 3 years

Text

First Thing I See Every Morning Is A Pug Who Loves Me T-Shirt from AmazinkShirt.com

Money and when the results came back there were the information that was a First Thing I See Every Morning Is A Pug Who Loves Me T-Shirt from AmazinkShirt.com lot of information we divided up amongst regimes and then came back together with that information is determined that there were two places in the body that were ideal for the microchip one was just below the airline for it checks their child’s temperature right here so we can the mothers 1 million inside I saw mother check their child’s temperature on their ankle always right place was the hands of the right hand preferred is most people are right handed I this automated bother anybody else on the team seemed a good place nobody wanted to hear and so the design work everything was completed the microchip was done. To get this pandemic under control no real help for the states and local governments trying to fill the vacuum of leadership from the White House no real help for children and educators for small businesses and front line workers that halted there ones holding our country together instead he’s issuing executive orders making promises that the end will defined the. NOVA THAT IS COMING SO WHAT I INCLUDED ON HERE IS JUST SOMETHING TO REALLY ANCHOR THIS AND THIS IS WHAT GOES ON WITH THE EARTH’S EXPERIENCE AND ALSO WHAT WE EXPERIENCE EVERY 26 000 YEARS BUT ALSO HOW IT’S TIED TO SOMETHING SUPERNATURAL THAT ACTUALLY AFFECTS US ALL AND THAT’S THE ASCENSION TO SEE WHAT NOW WE HAVE SOME REALLY POSITIVE AND SOME FUN VIDEOS FOR EVERYBODY TO WORK WITH FIRST OF ALL HIS JOE DISPENSER IS GOD HIDDEN WITHIN AND THIS IS BASED QUANTUM PHYSICS THAT EINSTEIN OBVIOUSLY HE WAS PRODUCING HIS MASSIVE THIS IS AN EXCELLENT VIDEO I THINK ANYBODY WOULD ENJOY NEXT WITH GREG BADEN AND THEN UNLEASHING THE POWER OF THE NEW AND THIS IS THE SCIENCE IS CLEAR WITHIN EACH OF US LIES AND EXTRAORDINARY POTENTIAL FAR BEYOND WHAT WAS BELIEVED POSSIBLE IN THE PAST SO THIS IS REALLY UNCOVERING WHO AND WHAT WE ARE AS HUMAN BEINGS AND THAT’S REALLY BEGINNING TO COME FORTH SO WE CONTINUE TO INVESTIGATE AND WILL INVESTIGATE AS WE GO TO THE FUTURE HOW WHAT IS TO BE HUMAN WHAT IT IS TO WHAT ARE THESE POWERS THAT ARE

Click To Buy It: First Thing I See Every Morning Is A Pug Who Loves Me T-Shirt from AmazinkShirt.com

First Thing I See Every Morning Is A Pug Who Loves Me T-Shirt from AmazinkShirt.com, Hoodie, Sweater, Longsleeve T-Shirt For Men and Women

First Thing I See Every Morning Is A Pug Who Loves Me T-Shirt from AmazinkShirt.com

Shar Pei Quarantine With My Dog T Shirt

Premium Trending This Christmas Season will Presents Who Love:

Cindy thought Dennis on some because I have a First Thing I See Every Morning Is A Pug Who Loves Me T-Shirt from AmazinkShirt.com storyand I got an amicable said he unless the phone from a Metallica for the last 50 years you from somewhere without me talk about a later soand asked me to do some questions for the fence I just wrote I just windows some some questions so just think in random order first question as to what happens with the teacher to get you get from fence due to meetand greetand to CDs under the candy or something all goes into a big box like that box filled out toneand being the two I go to go through it alland gives me a lot of a lot of messages going through all the documents being on the style of a people had getting me given usand unite of the all the CDsand listen to all my my limit I area are time sensitive meeting this by Wednesday the time to get around to it is six months later so there’s any opportunities that I pretty much missed all the stuff is pretty much goes into the boxand shipped home until I can get to after the tour we know the banners you hang them up in the day I think HQ on whatever the validity should you get if you really aside you really wear them we just keep them as a souvenir keep them was a souvenir yeah a man you know that stuff like that I came to this kind of put awayand when dams can display them all is fair enough one a question of money as well we we tape something today doing the show we did a few on state but why is it so hard to tape Kirk Gus for some reason Kirk always seems to run away from the camera I just I overwhelm on stageand Iand ex statements fiveand I been a complaint with photographers as well is that it is hard to take pictures of as a kind of a garden I got mean a focus have moved on to start me scan was fine I mean I just messes on stageand thatand am excitedand feeling the energy of the musicand then is coming off the is so more well because younoticed on the beatable moment after 50 times of the 50 shows is still fun to kick a ball’s absolutely it’s a lot of fine I mean I have to say it’s it’s very cooland it looks totally surreal when driving around dropping down people in them all around is a certain country well just take himand grab him other countries will decide to keep them all aroundand and I kind of played volleyball backand forth with them allotted a lot of times the hands of just gone back on stage which is weird to me because I would think you know they will would want to keep it coming that’s fine video to be both I it was actually a joke I made to play the child to a waveand the guys in Q5 Indiana being so we can have blue coming down well sure enough IPO toand England at the end of the show all these balloons came downand I just started cracking up we are just started cracking up my favorite time for me to pin down favorite type of music is a list of all sorts of stuff I mean it. Supporters to donate to a fun to bailout rioters in Minneapolis with AdSense problems until the National Guard when in and a stock would you say that was about what 22 minutes solo including an attempted cop killer they wanted to bail them out the policies will set cop killer spray we believe if you matter a police officer you should get the death penalty and I know yours’s arm of the government to young officer sitting in a car guy comes up now you do that stuff and get get away with it when the violent mob came to Kenosha you know can I show everybody now can Biden oppose sending in the National Guard we send in the National Guard and we say Kenosha received connection Kenosha and a lot of credit they could to the sheriff and so many others for their support and actually came and supported me in my was busy around here someplace one hour Michelle thank you very much I appreciate you as a first time he ever did it I appreciate it thank you very much man man took generations to build the America that we. Present moment we have reports of 493 million test having been performed across America and encouraging news as states have been engaging commercial labs at a higher level across the country yesterday our commercial labs system to more than 100 000 test in a single day so were beginning to activate all of the capacity and tomorrow at the president’s direction are task force will convene a conference call with all of the nation’s governors to talk about their progress that they are making on testing and writing here from governors about the practices that and methods that they are employing to significantly increase testing following our briefing about capacity and laboratories this past Monday friend since Gov Mike DeWine just announced that Ohio’s testing is been greatly expanded after the FDA approved Thermo Fisher’s new extraction reagent is saying in his words that the action quote probably doubled maybe even triple testing in Ohio virtually overnight Gov Tim Walz of Minnesota announced that along with the See Other Shirt: Merry Bassmas Fishing Santa Ugly Christmas T Shirt

#First #Thing #I #See #Every #Morning #Is #A #Pug #Who

0 notes

sinrau · 4 years

Link

sara.ziegler ( Sara Ziegler, sports editor): It’s been an incredible couple of days in the sports world, with athletes using their voices in ways that are nearly unprecedented. The NBA is on pause again tonight, though games in the playoff bubble will resume tomorrow. Before games start up again, though, we wanted to stop and talk about what this strike has meant, what it might accomplish going forward and how the players are changing the conversation.

What did you all make of Wednesday’s strike?

chris.herring ( Chris Herring, senior sportswriter): I had already seen the reports about the Celtics and Raptors contemplating whether to call off their game Thursday. But then Milwaukee beat everyone to the punch by doing it themselves. And I probably should have seen that possibility there, given the Bucks’ proximity to the Jacob Blake shooting, and the vocal nature of their players concerning police brutality.

dubin ( Jared Dubin, FiveThirtyEight contributor): I think for me the biggest thing was the domino effect the Bucks’ decision not to take the court had not just in the NBA, but in other sports. WNBA players have been leading on social justice issues for a while now, and once the NBA players decided not to play, it made sense that WNBA players would follow suit. But seeing players from MLB, the NHL and even the NFL take similar stands was notable.

dre.waters ( Andres Waters, FiveThirtyEight contributor): The snowball of everything was what really caught me by surprise too.

I understood the NBA as a whole being active and speaking up, because that’s become normal. But, when I saw the MLB and NHL was when I realized just how big this could get.

chris.herring: Yeah. I was kind of stunned when the reports on Wednesday night were coming out about the player meetings. At one point, LeBron James walked out, and it briefly looked like the season might be over. I’m still thinking about what kind of statement that would have sent, if that had been the case.

I’ll wonder for a while what that would have done, or how things might have been different.

tchow ( Tony Chow, video producer): I remembered it took a moment to fully realize what was happening. Seeing the images on Twitter of the empty courts was pretty jarring at first, and you could almost feel a collective sense of “holy shit, this is big.”

dubin: Right. And at first, it just seemed to me like George Hill was going to sit out. He’d said earlier in the week that the players should never have come to Orlando in the first place, and then he was listed as inactive for the game.

Oh, and before we get into everything else: The coverage on NBATV was absolutely riveting. I thought Bob Fitzgerald and especially Jim Jackson did a remarkable job, and then Sam Mitchell, Chris Webber and more people kept rotating in and out and making it even better.

chris.herring: I found myself peeling away from all the coverage at times. Maybe that’s weird. But it feels weird that people have to put their pain on display for some folks to realize how serious the subject of police brutality — and the lack of justice when it happens — is in the Black community.

The pandemic has magnified it for whatever reason, and the players protesting did, too. But it shouldn’t take all this to draw attention to it. I’m glad the attention is there now, though.

dre.waters: The craziest part to me was when I saw Elle Duncan’s tweet about the only other boycott of a game in the NBA in 1961.

And seeing this boycott is about the same issue of racial injustice really hurt.

sara.ziegler: That’s a great point, Dre. Black athletes are still having to fight the same fights, 60 years later.

dre.waters: I guess I’m pretty young … so I had never heard much about the Celtics boycott. But as soon as I saw the tweet, my only thought was WTF…

dubin: It’s definitely uncomfortable to watch people process such raw pain on TV. It shouldn’t take something like that to raise awareness for an issue that’s been so glaringly obvious for so long, but if it did make even one person more aware and wake them up to how much it affects Black people (and specifically young Black men like the players are and the former-player commentators once were), I feel like that’s good.

What stuck out to me, too, was how proud it seemed like the former players were of the current players for taking this stand. That was a big part of what C-Webb said, and you’ve seen guys like Bill Russell say the same thing on Twitter and elsewhere since. Considering how often former-player commentators rag on today’s game and some of the players, it was pretty striking.

sara.ziegler: Kenny Smith walking off the TNT set was also very moving, to me.

I confess that I was a little surprised that they did decide to start playing again — I thought this was it for the season. Did that surprise you guys?

tchow: I definitely thought by Wednesday night, after hearing those reports about the meetings Chris mentioned, that the season was done. It was difficult to see how they would continue and get back on the court after that.

dubin: It didn’t help that the reports about the meetings were conflicting, depending on whose timeline you were following. I think that contributed to making it seem more like the season was over.

dre.waters: The reports about the Lakers and Clippers voting not to continue is when I really thought it was over, honestly.

sara.ziegler: And LeBron! Seems like it would be hard to keep going if your biggest star doesn’t want to play.

dubin: Right. When we heard LeBron walked out of the meeting, I thought it was done. But then within like a half-hour, we heard that the votes from the Lakers and Clippers were more of an informal poll. Or something. It was all a lot, obviously.

dre.waters: Who could imagine the playoffs without LeBron and two of the favorites to win the championship?

dubin: Plus, the Bucks were the first team to not take the court, and the day before, it was the Raptors’ Fred VanVleet talking about how the players need to “ put our nuts on the line ” to get something instead of just T-shirts and slogans. Those might be the four most likely teams to win the title. Their willingness to sacrifice so much for real change was powerful.

chris.herring: Yeah. The season would have been over — there would’ve been no coming back from that.

sara.ziegler: How strange will it be on Saturday to just go back to playing the games? I don’t really want to “go back to normal” right now.

chris.herring: It probably depends on who you’re asking. It might be a bit strange for some of the players. I truly wonder how someone like George Hill — who’s already said he doesn’t know why they went down to Florida in light of some of this stuff happening — feels at a time like this.

I think them coming back after a couple days will feel normal to a huge number of fans. And that, in some ways, is the problem. It’s certainly an enormous part of the challenge, with the media, too: Instead of focusing on issues, we inevitably shift our attention back to the games. It’s why stuff seemed to get through so much more at the beginning of the pandemic, IMO: There weren’t other things like sports to distract us from the reality of how shameful this stuff is.

dubin: I think that for the teams that make the second round, having their families be able to come down within a few days could be a source of relief. Not necessarily to distract from what they want to accomplish, but being away from their families when another shooting happened has to have played a role in so many guys just saying enough is enough and we don’t want to be a distraction right now.

chris.herring: Amen to that part. The family members who are quarantined are supposed to be able to join them on Monday.

tchow: I can’t imagine the story of what happened Wednesday night and why it happened will go away anytime soon? I’m sure there are fans or media personnel who can’t wait to go back to covering Luka Dončić triple-doubles and James Harden highlights and all that. But it’s hard to see a world in which the media at large goes back to business as usual and covering these playoffs without constantly reminding fans of what happened this week.

dre.waters: I’m really interested to see how they go about covering this going forward. Much like we’ve talked about all through the quarantine, what is the new “normal”?

tchow: Or maybe I’ll reword that. It will say a lot about the U.S. if, by this time next week, we’re only reading about the Lakers’ chances of making the Finals or if Russell Westbrook will return to play.

dre.waters: They mentioned in the statement that the league and networks will use advertising spots to promote civic engagement, etc. What does that actually look like?

dubin: Also, does that actually do anything? I saw Diana Moskovitz say that the NFL has been doing that for a few years, and I didn’t even know about it. Seems … not effective.

chris.herring: I keep saying how conflicted I feel about all of this in one sense: The decision to stop playing — not just for a day, but for the rest of the season — would have been monumental. It would have been the biggest statement you could possibly make. I think LeBron probably could have triggered something along those lines by himself.

I also think it would have been incredibly risky. Not every player could afford to do that. It could have triggered a lockout. But I also imagine it would have helped the players get a seat at certain tables and afforded them more power to ask for more action, or more money for certain things to tackle some of these highly systemic problems.

The feeling I had after hearing that, one day later, they’d agreed to go back to play was similar to how I felt when Colin Kaepernick settled his suit with the NFL.

No sense of disappointment on my part whatsoever. Because I know how much it must be to bear that weight on their shoulders. And it’s personal to their lives, as far as money and the ridicule they face by staying in that moment. But I will always be curious about whether more could have been achieved had they gone all the way with it and ended the season. We’ll never know.

sara.ziegler: I completely agree with you, Chris. I wish we could know what response would have had the best outcome.

tchow: What I would give to be in these meetings to learn how much it took for the players to agree to come back to play. Because this is such a drastic statement, I can’t imagine the players would agree without some reluctance. With the initiatives and commitments they announced, I want to know if the players think this is enough. Is it a good enough start? I have so many questions.

dubin: There has been some positive movement already:

Breaking: Senate Majority Leader @SenFitzgerald says the state Senate will convene Monday for the special legislation session called for by @GovEvers.

— Molly Beck (@MollyBeck) August 28, 2020

That’s explicitly what the Bucks asked for in their statement.

sara.ziegler: Oh, wow.

dubin: But it’s something a lot of people have said the past few days: For all this to be on the shoulders of NBA players is asking way too much of them. It’s so much responsibility and so many different competing and possibly conflicting motivations. Even handling it the way they did is pretty incredible.

chris.herring: Absolutely, Jared.

That part is so important: It’s not their responsibility.

dubin: Like, a) it should not have to fall to Black people to fix systemic racism; b) it should not have to fall to young people to fix systemic racism; and c) it should not have to fall to young, Black people who are separated from their families at such a fraught time to fix systemic racism or anything else, really.

chris.herring: It’s so bizarre to me that they’ve done so much to shine a light on all this stuff, yet people still expect more of them, as if it’s not people that look like them that are being shot and disproportionately killed while unarmed. That they’d play in the middle of a pandemic that’s disproportionately infecting and killing off their community, and play in a bubble away from their families. That a number of them have started organizations to support voting reform. That a number have spent time talking about solutions with police and people in their cities. And yet people will hit them with a “ What about China? ” as if the players don’t actually care about the stuff in their backyards and their own communities.

(I also think a ton of people disingenuously ask that question, much the same way people ask “ What about Chicago? ” whenever a community of folks is rightfully up in arms over a police shooting.)

sara.ziegler: ^^^ THIS

dubin: Definitely agree with that. But also, it’s possible for people within the NBA (or outside it) to have been wrong on things relating to China and 100 percent right about this.

chris.herring: Absolutely.

tchow: From the statements we’ve seen both written and those that players have read aloud or said to the media, it feels like this action comes more from just exasperation and frustration. They are TIRED. And I think that sentiment can be shared by a lot of Americans right now.

dubin: It’s exhausting and frustrating to me, and I’m a white man who doesn’t have to physically fear for my life in every interaction I have with police. I can’t imagine how it is for people who have to live that reality every day.

chris.herring: I’m quite tired of people being held to a standard of caring about something that the critics don’t hold themselves to — especially when the players appear to be taking actionable steps on so many other human rights issues that are happening in this country.

dubin: Also tired of people pretending that because (some) NBA players make hundreds of millions of dollars, these things don’t affect them.

tchow: YUP

dre.waters: AGREED!

dubin: Also, every player in the NBA has family and friends who are not in the NBA. They also were not in the NBA from birth. They had to grow up into the people they are now. So, they didn’t always have this fame or money or influence.

And then something that doesn’t get talked about a lot: most NBA players are, comparatively speaking, HUGE compared to the rest of the population. In a world in which police can exaggerate the size of Black men to justify being scared and then using force, already being really, really big could make things even more dangerous for them.

dre.waters: That’s a great point, Jared.

tchow: Yeah, one thing I’ve noticed recently is the number of NBA players who are sharing NEW stories about the times they’ve been profiled by the police and a lot of their interviews to the media have acknowledged that “when I leave the court, I’m still Black” sentiment.

dre.waters: Watching all the coverage of this should be a reminder of that. How many Black commentators and former players have we seen still mention that they have the same talks with their families and loved ones that every other Black family has to have?

sara.ziegler: I hope that white fans are listening to that — and really hearing it.

chris.herring: I’m cynical. But I hope at some point I’m wrong for being that way.

What Happened In The NBA This Week?

#IFTTT #WordPress

0 notes

un-enfant-immature · 4 years

Text

Three travel startups tell us how they’re responding to the coronavirus crisis

With the globalized world going into partial or complete lock down over the Covid-19 pandemic, startups in the travel sector are facing a huge stress test and immediate disruption to business as usual as public health concern spirals and entire populations are encouraged or even forced not to travel.

The traditional travel hub of Europe has emerged as a secondary hotspot for the virus, after SARS-CoV-2 first emerged in China late last year.

Italy, France and Spain have all reported thousands of cases apiece, with the latter declaring a state of high alert today. Earlier this week Italy — the hardest hit EU country so far — imposed nationwide travel restrictions, with confirmed cases passing 12,000 as of yesterday. Several other EU countries have also implemented varying quarantine measures. More lockdowns are expected in the coming weeks.

In a further development, US President Trump sent shockwaves through EU institutions earlier this week by unilaterally announcing a 30-day ban on travel from most countries in the bloc.

Today the European Commission came out with its own response — laying out a $37BN package of measures intended to mitigate the socio-economic impact of Covid-19, including bringing forward €1BN out of the EU budget to act as a guarantee to the European Investment Fund to encourage banks to lend to SMEs in affected sectors.

“This is expected to mobilise €8BN of working capital financing and support at least 100,000 small and medium-sized businesses and small mid-cap companies in the EU,” the Commission said, suggesting banks will be in a position to act on the liquidity injection from April 2020.

Of course travel startups with investor capital in the bank aren’t waiting around to react to the coronavirus crisis. They’re already ripping up 2020 roadmaps and thinking again — swapping out marketing plans and doubling down on product and engineering, according to three businesses we spoke to.

We asked three European travel startups how they’re being impacted by the coronavirus crisis and what steps they’re taking to manage a demand crunch combined with ongoing — and potentially long term — uncertainty in the sector.

Berlin-based GetYourGuide, which has built a marketplace selling sightseeing tours and other travel experiences, and last year bagged a $484M Series E round; Omio, another Berlin-based startup that’s built a multi-modal travel aggregator and booking platform, backed by nearly $300M to-date; and Barcelona-based TravelPerk, a fast-growing business travel booking platform that’s pulled in more than $130M in VC funding as it shakes up a legacy space.

“Demand is dropping off a cliff”

All three told us they’ve seen a major drop in bookings combined with a rise in customer service demand as people with existing travel plans seek to get in touch to cancel or reschedule trips.

As of this week GetYourGuide said bookings for new experiences are down nearly 50% globally vs its demand forecasts for the past two weeks. While customer service enquiries have tripled in the past two weeks, and its global cancellation rate has ticked up by 20%.

Those that are still planning trips are doing so closer to home or with less advanced notice than normal — with bookings made within three days of the start time up 15%.

“It’s the biggest nuclear winter I’ve ever seen in online travel,” co-founder and CEO Johannes Reck told TechCrunch. “Everyone goes and prepares for Easter break and that is not at all happening. All of the European countries seem to be in lockdown.

“None of our Italian customers are booking, the German customers have degraded rapidly. France and Spain have recently followed. The UK has been more stable but seems to follow the same course now. And the US since [Trump announced the travel ban] as well… The US travel ban is now sealing it. So this will be a year of extreme turbulence of the travel market.”

For Omio it’s a similar story — with bookings over the last two weeks down between 30-40% overall across all markets, according to founder and CEO Naren Shaam, and a big spike in demand for customer service as worried customers look to cancel trips.

“The whole company is actually stepping in to help customer service because we’ve seen a spike in cancellations,” he said. “In general the impact is heavy. Demand is dropping off a cliff but it’s not as bad as we thought — but it is definitely heavy.”

It’s seeing similar changes in booking behavior. “Advanced booking has come down drastically,” he noted. “But we see a spike in short term last minute trips when people feel comfortable on the region — so that’s gone up a lot.”

TravelPerk told us it’s currently dealing with a drop in business globally of around 50%. Though co-founder and CEO Avi Meir is braced for further drops if more of the West goes into lockdown forcing more companies to scrap business trips.

“You would expect that it dropped to zero but right now people are still travelling,” he told us. “Everybody who can avoid traveling right now probably should and does but you have many people who just critically have to keep travelling — so we see around 50% drop right now.”

“Regionally of course as expected APACS has been the most affected in terms of our volumes — Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and China down north of 95%. 100% depending on which day you’re looking and what country you’re looking at,” he added. “China is actually starting to open up a little bit but at the peak we looked at 100% — nothing was being booked in terms of destination.

“In terms of the more core markets for us, Italy is 84% down right now… You also see significant impact in Belgium, Netherlands, Holland, Sweden.

“France, Spain and UK are down year-on-year but not significantly yet. In the Western part of the continent and the UK people are still traveling relatively more than other countries.”

Demand for TravelPerk’s customer support has also never been so busy, he also said.

“We actually are switching some of our sales team to customer support in the coming weeks just to support the volume of tickets,” he noted. “We’re very proud that our metrics are not declining — meaning specifically service level; how fast we solve cases; our ‘C-sats’, customer satisfaction. The metrics we really care about. Are people happy and are we solving their cases fast?

“We’re keeping them although, so far, the past weeks have been the busiest in customer support since we started the company via number of tickets.”

TravelPerk has also seen radical changes to the usual booking window. “Most of the trips we see right now is somebody booking for tomorrow or for two days from now because they for know they can travel or have certainty they can travel,” said Meir. “Which is unusual compared to normal times. In normal times people book 20-21 days ahead on average. So you have a huge decrease in the booking window.”

While of its flagship products is actually seeing high demand in the current crisis situation, per Meir — given it’s designed to offer resilience against unforeseen changes to plans.

“We have this product, FlexiPerk, which allows the users to cancel or change for any reason and if they do they get at least 90% of the money back. FlexiPerk has been really, really on fire over the past few weeks — both in terms of users, those who are already on FlexiPerk and also new sign-ups which is actually driving a lot of our growth in terms of signs ups.

“It gives people the certainty — or it reduces the uncertainty — about the mid- term or long term future. So if you are planning a trip in September or in October it’s reasonable to expect to be able to travel but you don’t really know. And FlexiPerk really plugs this gap because it allows you to book now for September knowing that if you have to change your plans you can do so without losing the money.”

“Right now most of the airlines have changed their cancelation policies so we are able to get full refunds in many cases,” he added.

All three European businesses said the changes in demand had hit extremely rapidly.

“Up until maybe 2-3 weeks ago we were still growing,” Meir told us. “Because most of our travellers — or at least the headquarters of the travellers — are concentrated in Europe and North America so the impact was kind of delayed.”

“Since we’re more a global business we already started noticing Chinese outbound dropping — because we have an office in China — it hit us already around January, February. So we already saw that in our Chinese outbound dropping by 90+%,” added Omio’s Shaam.

GetYourGuide’s Reck said it was also forewarned of the looming crunch via their Asian business.

“We had already seen a significant decline in our Asian business,” he told us. “That was still so small and the overall growth in Europe and the US was so strong that it was negligible at that point in time — but it gave us a glimpse.”

Two of its investors, Japan-based Softbank and Singapore-based Temasek, also put GetYourGuide on early “red alert” over the novel coronavirus because other portfolio companies were suffering heavy impacts.

“We had two weeks to prepare which I guess put us ahead of the curve for most other US and European companies,” said Reck. “Then when corona hit, at the end of February, we’ve seen a very rapid decline and now the current global travel demand is roughly 60% down from where it should be at this point in time so we are massively depressed.”

The change is more marked for being set against “a tremendous start to the year” before the virus hit Europe — Reck dubs it “the best time in history of the company” — with January and February seeing it close to doubling business.

Rerouting resources in a travel crunch

So how are the three founders coping with a sudden revenue crunch combined with spiralling global uncertainty falling over their sector?

All three described being relatively well cushioned — on account of recent financing.

“We are in an incredible position because we’ve raised this massive round last year and we haven’t spent a lot of it,” said GetYourGuide’s Reck. “We’ve been very frugal with it. In the early months after the fund raise SoftBank was very angry with us that we were so disciplined and we weren’t investing more in growth. Now they’re, I think, very, very happy — the new role model for the portfolio.

“The good news is that as we come from a position of strength and we will survive and prevail for sure. That’s the positive news.”

With plenty of capital still in the bank the team has been able to quickly redirect resources on servicing near-term customer needs during the travel crunch.

“The way we’re seeing this internally is with every major crisis comes major opportunity. At this point in time we believe there’s incredible opportunity to make a real different for our customers, our suppliers and our ecosystem broadly,” Reck added. “For instance, for customers we have pushed immediately after we saw the news coming full flexibility on bookings and cancelations.

“Customers can now cancel all of the experiences 24 hours in advance, no questions asked, for a refund. If you go under 24 hours you actually get a gift coupon so you can rebook of the full value in the future. And if you’re affected by a lockdown you will get the full amount back no questions asked.”

“We’ve been doing mass cancellations for Italy. We’re just doing it for France. We’re doing it for the US because of the travel ban now. We refund our customers fully, no questions asked,” he added.

Reck also said it’s doing what it can to support suppliers who will also clearly be struggling from the same demand crunch.

“Wherever there’s an opening where we see demand popping up again we make sure it gets as quickly as possible to our suppliers,” he told us, saying its doubling down on its GetYourGuide Originals in-house short tours product. “We want to be a good partner. We don’t go in now and start to negotiate on commission rates or anything like that.”

Another area it’s spending on right now is localization — in order that it can support suppliers by being able to cater to demand cropping up off the beaten track.

“We’re translating our offering into more languages,” he noted. “We’re making sure the offering itself has better terms for the customers in terms of cancelation policies and we’re educating the suppliers around that — and that will ultimately drive their bookings. So we are doing quite a bit in order to make sure that they survive and that they get the revenue through our platform that they deserve.”

Zooming out, Reck told us he’s taking “a really long term view” on travel.

“The travel landscape through this crisis will inevitably change,” he predicted. “When the corona crisis is over online travel will look very different and just survival is going to be an incredible competitive advantage vs the rest. We believe that a lot of players will go bust. And we see that already as we speak so over the next couple of days you’ll see major layoffs, you’ll see restructurings, you’ll see people scramble.”

“That’s what we always said when we raised the SoftBank round. Ironically I never knew that long term view would actually mean that we freeze down for a year… but if you look at online travel over the course of history and you look at the big dips — like 9/11 was a massive dip and the following recession; the financial crisis was a massive dip — you see overall travel is a long term trend. And I think if you look at a ten year timespan even this corona crisis will just be a small dip in a growth curve.

“So I’m very long on travel over a longer period of time. And that’s where we’re doubling down. So we’re rather taking the opportunity now to really focus on product and engineering — and that’s something really liberating to me. Of not really having a 2020 budget anymore.

“The conversion gains on the margin won’t matter. So we can really double down on significantly improving the product for our customer and that means giving a better search and discovery experience, more personalized, curating more GetYourGuide Originals with our suppliers… So that when we come out of this crisis we come out with a better technology product and a much better supply base.”

“I think, as I said, just surviving will be a competitive advantage. Surviving with a better product and better supply will be magic — and that’s really what we’re betting on.”

Omio, meanwhile, is also in a position to look beyond the current crisis in demand.

“We are lucky to be well funded and have raised a lot of capital,” said Shaam. “We’re lucky to have very long term investors when you think of Kinnevik and Temasek — both of them…. almost like a mutual fund so basically long term capital.”

Nonetheless, the business has responded to plunging demand by trimming variable costs — while also viewing the demand crunch as an opportunity to rechannel investment into the core product.

“We’re cutting all variable costs, managing the costs better, taking precautions — using the crisis as an opportunity… fixing all the systems we could never invest in in scale because every month there’s a metric to meet. And really then rearchitecting for scalability,” he told us.

“Because the main thing is if you think of travel, human inherent desire to travel is never going to go down. Right now what we’re doing is bottling that in for 3-4 months but you’ve got to open the lid at some point — I hope — and when that comes out the demand will grow even faster. And we want to be ready for that. So we’re using this, call it, crisis as an opportunity to really build scalability. All the underlying architecture, campaign structures, whatever data flows were not perfect before, product messaging etc.

“The cash position of course is something we have an eye on, as stewards of capital, but it’s more so that we’re also using this as an opportunity to really think long term and how we actually benefit.”

Duty of care

As a crisis response, Shaam said Omio has put together three internal task forces to respond to immediate challenges — one focused on supporting its customers; another on its own employees; and a third concentrating on business stability and figuring out where to invest and where to pull back during unusual times.

On the customer support side Omio’s suppliers define cancellation policies so there’s only so much it can do but Shaam said it’s been putting out messaging to help users — creating a spreadsheet of cancellation policies listing companies that give refunds and those that don’t, and publishing updates on things like cancelled flights.

On the employee support side there’s a mix of well-being and practical issues being tackled.

“How can we protect safety regulations? Trigger points. We have clear guidelines… today we triggered that we work from home for 15 days,” he said. “How to protect mental health so nobody goes crazy sitting at home all day? Connectivity, all of that stuff. What if you have school shut down — how do you balance children at home alone with working at the same time? All of this stuff.

“There’s a lot of practical questions that come up — like the design team need to take their chunky monitors home so they can actually design. All of these things are being tackled by that task force.”

“As a startup you can actually bring these together very quickly,” Shaam added. “Today we had a small team — that team is now quite large, 10+ people going at all three workstreams. So let’s see how we survive.

“Again, there’s a lot of uncertainty but I feel that the best thing I can do is bring stability, bring confidence into the organization.”

TravelPerk’s Meir said the business is also most focused on responding to immediate challenges and needs — including keeping up with the demand it’s seeing.

Even though bookings are down new sign ups are up, he told us.

“The focus right now as an organization is really on the day by day — we need to make sure we keep providing the service,” he said. “We keep actually selling and a lot of companies are signing up. Sign ups are actually dramatically up. People are signing up they’re just obviously not travelling so we have a lot of short term priorities that are extremely important.

“Maybe if we hadn’t raised a C round last year — $100+ million — we would be in a different situation but right now we are fortunate to be in this position so we have to focus on short term priorities without knowing where it’s going to end.”

The company is also using a moment of plunging sales to direct attention on product. And is hiring more engineers to be able to accelerate product dev — including to build crisis response features.

“I’m sure we’re not unique in the tech world but we’re actually investing more in the product. So we keep hiring — we actually increased our hiring plan for product and engineering. And so far we’re not reducing our burn let’s say but we’re shifting that towards really what matters for our customers.

“We’re already ahead of the curve in product but this is a really good opportunity to keep pushing on our strengths and another one we’re doing is adjusting the business and the business model as well.”

Meir gave the example of a premium concierge service which it’s just decided to provide for free for all its users for the next three months. “Although it’s going to increase dramatically our costs in customer care it’s the right thing to do for our customers,” he said of that particular coronavirus triggered business adjustment.

“You’ll see some really cool stuff coming out,” he added. “The product team, together with the commercial team is changing roadmaps. In a way we threw the roadmap of 2020 to the bin and we started working on a weekly basis.”

Another example he gave is a new feature it’s launched in partnership with medical and travel security company, International SoS, to help companies not only track where in the world their employees are but ensure they have the medical or other crisis expertise support available should the worst happen off-site.

“It’s the best company in the world for duty of care,” said Meir. “It’s one of those topics that in normal times people don’t really like to think about it — but this is probably the highest request we were getting in the past 2-3 weeks from customers.”

“We went from idea to releasing it in less than 5 days of work,” he added. “So again reducing the risk, reducing the uncertainty piece. This is a thing that we’re going to do more and more as this situation evolves. If we have a request for a feature like ‘duty of care’ — which makes tonnes of sense right now — we’re going to shift the roadmap and do more of these kind of things.”

“This is a moment to be decisive and adaptable but also courageous and to invest in what makes TravelPerk stronger this year, next year and ten years,” he added. “This doesn’t change — we have great investors. We have a good cash position, great team. So we should keep hiring, we should keep investing in the product, we should keep investing in our service — so my biggest worry is that we [don’t] act out of panic or out of confusion — and that’s something we should be aware of and not do. But I’m happy to say that that’s not the case.”

As part of its own pro-active crisis response, TravelPerk has this week switched to 100% remote working — a radical change for Meir, who has deliberately required presence from his staff up to now for workplace culture reasons.

“We don’t do remote work. It’s something that’s one of these trendy things that we decided not to do yet for various reasons. We just think our culture is much stronger when people are physically in the same space and we switched from nobody does remote work to 100% remote,” he told us.

“We thought that the government — especially in Spain where most of our team is — is not reacting fast enough and aggressively enough [to Covid-19]. This is really unfair for the elderly and those who have previous health conditions…So we decided to take action… And I was just amazed how fast we transitioned from a company that doesn’t do remote to full on remote.”

GetYourGuide has also gone fully remote. “We did that on Monday,” said Reck. “Everyone called me crazy and now on Friday everyone wants to have our best practices playbook.”

“The health and safety of our employees and most importantly of the community around us [is our biggest concern],” he added. “We are in constant contact with everyone — to make sure people feel safe.

“They are now at home, they follow the news all the time. There’s huge psychological pressure — the travel market’s going down, the stock market’s going down — so for me by biggest role is to keep that strong engagement and morale and that people don’t feel threatened by the situation around them.”

As it happens, Reck is a biochemist by education — so likely one of relatively few founders in the travel space with hands-on lab experience of viruses. He’s also braced for the longest ‘nuclear winter’ of business disruption of the three startups we spoke to.

“What we know about this virus is there is no immunity in the population — meaning that this will continue to spread,” he said. “Every potential person is a host. And it’s very infectious and it seems to stick around quite a bit. And it puts a lot of stress on public health systems. So I personally anticipate there will be a very long lockdown in a lot of countries. And there will be only a very slow recovery. If you’d ask me we might see some reopening of the travel landscape in summer but I think that will be far diminished from a typical season. We’ll only see a full recovery towards May, June, July 2021. I don’t think it will be earlier than that.”

“It will get worse,” he added. “We know now it’s very likely there will be a lockdown [across the West]. My biggest wish for the next couple of weeks will be that employees continue to be healthy, safe and continue to be able to work and contribute like they’ve done.”

Omio’s Shaam is expecting at least several months of disruption to business as usual — pointing to the lack of a swift and coordinated response from governments to implement quarantine measures.

“We need a system-wide [response] like China or Singapore has done beautifully to really prevent it and I don’t believe that’s going to happen so we’re bracing for 3-4 months impact,” he told us.

“I just went out last night in Berlin with my wife for dinner and the restaurants are full, it’s crowded, the subways are full — full! Like not even 20% lower. Completely full. We had to make a reservation to get a table etc. So unless governments, in a very coordinated way, shut down borders for a period of 4-6 weeks so everybody goes into isolation in one go and everybody comes out — it’s going to drip feed for a long time because people are acting in different points of time on their own means.”

On the question of whether there will be a lasting impact on the travel market as the pandemic undoes global supply chains and routines, Shaam said again that’s likely to depend on how co-ordinated or otherwise the response is.

“There’s a lot of fixed costs part of travel. So I think the answer to that largely depends on how co-ordinated and how quickly we can contain. If we all actually manage to come back in 3-4 months I think we’re in a good place because it’ll bounce back quite strongly. If it’s drip feeding, and it takes the wind out for a very long time, then there will be a different situation but I hope not.”

In the meanwhile, with so many businesses getting au fait with virtual meetings and videoconferencing tools, the coronavirus crisis could also have a long term impact on demand for business travel — if lots of companies realize quite how much can be done remotely.

On this element of the crisis, TravelPerk’s Meir isn’t concerned.

“It’s an interesting theory,” he said, deferring from hazarding a guess on whether it will come to pass or not. “It doesn’t really matter for us as a company. Because companies spend $1.6TR a year on business travel. And it’s a market that is growing. Before this crisis predicted growth of 6 or 7% in 2020 — which is huge compared to the size of the market. So even if we’re talking about 10-20%, let’s say, at the edges this doesn’t change the picture. You still will have a tonne of business travel when we come back out of it.”

“If we zoom out a bit from this situation — there is a trend for more sustainable approach to travel,” Meir added. “So if so many things can turn into a Zoom call I don’t think it’s a bad idea for the planet. And we will do well. We’re not worried about a scenario like this.”

Here TravelPerk isn’t worried because the startup has another product for that: GreenPerk — a carbon offset offering it launched earlier this month. It’s been developed in partnership with non-profit Atmosfair, which works on decarbonization via UN-endorsed carbon mitigation projects.

“Many companies asked us to help them offset and reduce the impact that their travel generates and we thought that just reporting on what harm you do is not good enough. We wanted actually to make a difference,” said Meir. “One of the projects that we chose is efficient cooking stoves in Rwanda.”

GreenPerk uses an algorithm to calculate the carbon footprint of a given trip and then applies a per booking fee proportional to the pollution created — with the fee going to fund the carbon offset project.

GreenPerk is an opt in product — and Meir says it’s already had “amazing traction”, with more than 50 companies already signed up and using it.

“It’s unfair for us — people who live in very comfortable counties — to ask people in Rwanda to stop cooking their food but if we can help them transition to efficient and also faster ways of cooking then we should definitely do that… so the project funds efficient cooking stoves to replace the polluting ones.”

“If the world after this crisis looks like we are conscious about how we travel — when we do travel we try not to have an impact — and if, sometimes, making Zoom calls are better than face to face I think it’s not a bad scenario for the world. And we as a travel company will adapt like we always have,” he added. “It’s more interesting to look at the long term implication — rather than ‘is it good for our quarter or not’.”

#TechCrunch

0 notes

magzoso-tech · 4 years

Text

Three travel startups tell us how they’re responding to the coronavirus crisis

New Post has been published on https://magzoso.com/tech/three-travel-startups-tell-us-how-theyre-responding-to-the-coronavirus-crisis/

Three travel startups tell us how they’re responding to the coronavirus crisis