scholars – Research Synergy Institute

9th July 202014th July 2020

Online Lecturing Series #askExpert2: Covid-19: Revival of Tourism and Hospitality Industry

Since the covid-19 outbreak, which have been declared as a pandemic by WHO, we cannot ignore its inevitable impacts in any industries and sectors worldwide. Hospitality industries are among those have been feeling the hardest hit. We are aware of this impact and as a form of our real knowledge contribution, we decided to invite Assoc. Prof. Dr.Vinay Chamoli, from Maharaja Agrasen University, India, to provide us as global researchers with rich insights and analysis in Research Synergy Foundation webinars by the theme: Covid-19: Revival of Tourism and Hospitality Industry. The webinars was held on Wednesday, 8 July 2020 using Zoom as a platform

This event has more than 160 participants that has been registered from 11 countries around the world, such as Indonesia, India, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Nepal, Morocco, Myanmar, Nigeria, Canada, Afghanistan. In the opening session, webinars started by a brief introduction regarding Research Synergy Foundation as a global research ecosystem by Mrs Santi Rachmawati. The event then continued with a presentation session from the speaker Assoc. Prof. Dr.Vinay Chamoli which was moderated by Mrs. Ani Wahyu.

Dr. Vinay started his lecture by presenting an overview about tourism and hospitality industry in every regions. In terms of international tourism spending, China remains the world largest spender, followed by the United States. With a variety of reasons for travel, airplane is still the most widely used transportation by tourists. In 2019, tourism industry –mainly from a leisure industry- has contributed a lot to the total GDP worldwide. It reached 4,715 billion U.S. dollars in 2019 from global leisure tourism spending. The first position of the world’s major connection hub for international flights is Dubai International Airport, with over 86.3 million international passengers uplifted in 2019. While in terms of revenue, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Continental Holdings are in the top position.

As for some of the impact of Covid-19 on this industry, Dr. Vinay explained in his several analysis. The first major impact of Covid-19 on tourism and hospitality industry was job and visitor loss. Covid-19 may not be the 1^st infectious disease that the world faces, but this virus has forced hospitality industries to reimagine how they run their business. Almost all international travels are banned. Many countries and regions have imposed quarantines, so as the workers and visitors who are the core of the industry. Airlines sector, global hotel market, as well as restaurants are suffering a huge loss, and thus revenue decreasing cannot be avoided. Some hotels have even turned into quarantine places. This happens in some Asian countries, like India and Indonesia. People will fear to travel within such condition, so psychological problems with travelers will persist afterwards.

However, the Covid-19 does not mean to be a ‘case judge’ who decided that this industry seems unable to survive and there will be no choice at all. The industry still has a chance to be able to survive by applying a Global Protocol for the New Normal as a ‘Safe Travels’ standard conducted by World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC). It includes:

Operational and staff preparedness:

All tourism and hospitality industries must plan to start the operation based on Global Protocol standard. They must know and adopt WHO standard of cleanliness, food concerns, room services, and etc for the employees and tourists safety.

Ensuring a safe experience

Enhance sanitation based on WHO standard and discipline in practicing physical distancing. For example in the restaurant, regulations such as a menu and bills are transferred to the visitor’s phone to avoid physical contact.

Rebuilding Trust and Confidence

Building customer trust with applying ‘perform and inform’ that it is safe to travel with them and use their facilities.

Implementing Enabling Policies

New policies has to be implemented as a recovery efforts for various losses, like adding a new job and enhance promotion.

Clinically Clean is the New Level

We must be accustomed to applying an improved standard of our clean habits.

Before ending his presentation, Dr. Vinay displayed a video advertisement of one of U.S. Airlines which contains a message, ‘We are ready for you when you’re ready to fly’. He also quoted Paulo Coelho, ’The ship is safest when it is port, but that’s not what ships were built for’. The slogan seemed meaningful to strengthen each other and build readiness to go back to a normal condition together.

In this lecture, there was an interactive discussion with the participants, here we summarize some interesting questions along with the answers:

Abderrahim Naim (Sultan Moulay Simane University, Morocco)

Q: How can tourist structure be able to revive their economy? And with what strategy?

A: Tourism sector still can run, as government has opened several potential sectors, but they have to ensure they must follow the guidelines to ensure safe travel, all employees must be trained well-enough how to maintain safety health standard

Eva (Bogor Agricultural University, Indonesia)

Q: Are there any difference for tourism industry at urban and rural area (particularly community based industry), related to the effort to revitalized the industry?

A: We can call that rural areas are the unexplored areas. Due to the psychological effects as the impact of covid-19, there will be a possibility for some peoples –especially urban people- will love to go to safe and less crowded places like rural areas. So, rural areas will be developed and it will help to increase the economic potential for the residents. People can still survive their own industry in urban and rural areas by applying the new normal and health protocol standards.

Prof. Revelina (Philippines)

Q: How government, academicians, and citizens help awaken the tourism industry?

A: By moving to organize any online classes or webinars, government, academicians and citizens still can make a meaningful impact. Like me, I still keep in touch with my students, one of them is the chef and his hotel is shut down. But he can still survive with his job, by managing community kitchen, host a party in their home, and as a chef he can go to customer’s house and served a good food for them. I always say that ‘human is not the strongest, it is dinosaurs, but it cannot survive, and human is the smartest, so they can manage to survive and keep supporting each other’.

Retno Budi Wahyuni (Indonesia)

Q: What is the most important part to be the 1^st priority of recovery caused by covid19?

A: Being creative in any areas, people should protect their interest, planning any activities in any areas with a new standard, get rid a negative side of this pandemic, growing a self-belief that we can pass this condition together.

How insightful the discussion was, and many more questions to ask from the participants. The webinars has closed successfully and we look forward to your participation in RSF next events.

20th May 202027th July 2020

Scientific and Academic Writing Workshop

On 19 May 2020, Research Synergy Foundation in collaboration with Poltekkes Medan and Palu held a live Scientific and Academic Writing Workshop to help enhance and accelerate author capacity towards outstanding global scholars. This online workshop is attended by more than 100 lecturers and faculty staff of Poltekkes Medan and Palu. The event is strategically designed to discuss urgency and what must be prepared to be global researchers and how to build a global reputation in academic world. By this program, we strive to provide facilities and intensive training for researchers so that it will help changing the productivity and merit of their work. Engaging a new platform internationally international exposure is highly beneficial for academic careers

The online workshop was hosted by Dr. Hendrati Mulyaningsih, SE., MM., CECP., CT as founder and chairman of Research Synergy Foundation. The workshop presented 3 session. In the first session, Dr. Hendrati started the presentation with her explanation about the objective of the workshop and benefit of research publication. She also summarized 2 main ways for being globally accepted: wider your horizon and know what to write. As the final step in the research process is disseminating the work, publishing research works in scholarly journals has now become not just optional but obligatory for researchers. Publishing process refines writing skills and it will help the researchers get different benefits, such as: peer recognition, career advancement, subject development, and professional promotion. Research publication with the aim of making knowledge beneficial at various levels are also in line with education policy in Indonesia. To fulfil this step, researchers should engage in any scientific forum. There are many option for students or researchers to present their work: non-indexed and indexed conference proceeding or non-indexed and indexed journals.

In the 2^nd session, Dr. Hendrati gave details of what is meant by research and what is key attributes of a good research paper. Structuring a good paper, authors should pay attention to what they read and how to fill the gap between them, reviewers, and editors. Dr. Hendrati then showed some tips for technical improvement in crafting a good research paper and how to avoid violations of publication ethics in the last session of her presentation. The presentation was so clear enough to be applied and hope it encourage participants to develop their research skill and give a huge benefit to society.

19th May 202027th July 2020

How to Make your Academic Conference Effective and Efficient?

An academic conference or scientific conference is a one-day or multiday meeting which researchers present and discuss their work within their field. Attending an academic conference is an exciting opportunity to build networks with other academics and experts and exchange stimulating ideas. Academic conferences are not just for academics, it can be attended by various groups of people with certain expertise and profession from local to global. Some conferences focus on highly-specialized topics and are usually organized by institution, associations, or group of independent researchers. For some researchers, academic conference help to make their research process easier. Thus, the academic conference is a crucial part of academic life.

As a stage for academic career development, some researchers began to choose to become conference organizers. They seemed to rest for a while from a busy moment in the campus or laboratory, and meet with their circle that will give birth and transmit constructive ideas. However, conferences held by certain institutions experience convoluted bureaucratic constraints, as well as financial problems that tend to be wasteful. As a social enterprise committed to being dedicated to the education world, we (Research Synergy Foundation) would like to share our experience in managing international conference which is one of our featured program. Presented as a speaker of the webinar is Mrs. Santi Rahmawati, a founder and director of Global Network Operation of Research Synergy Foundation, also served as Director of Scholarvein. More than 120 participants were engaged virtually in this webinar.

Mrs. Santi began her presentation by emphasizing four common questions in managing international conference; Man, Budget, Process, and Output. She also discussed some of the benefits for organizing international conference for institution that includes publication matters, university ranking, international outlook, accreditation, credibility, and positioning, develop stronger research groups and collaboration, and extra non-tuition fees. Conferences can come in any shape, like academic conference, virtual conference, trade conference, UnConference, business conference, and etc. As more gatherings get shut down due to current pandemic outbreak, virtual conferences appeared to be very popular as an alternative to any various meetings.

Mrs. Santi then gave a detailed description of the process of managing a conference which she divided into 3 stages: pre-during-post process. The description explains what actually needs to be prepared rather than what most people sees. In terms of publication as the final outcome which is usually awaited by the participants, she illustrated a complete process which happened immediately after the conference was over. By applying these 3 stages, RSF ensures that the process of publishing participants articles runs properly. Both the organizer and the participant must work together and support each other during the publication process. RSF have affiliated with hundreds of national and international journals and publishers with various indexation. With these sources, we hope to provide greater ease and effectiveness to disseminate knowledge contribution across the globe. Conference management also requires the role of appropriate stakeholders to create a conducive ecosystem. They also have to make sure that the budget is reasonable and well-allocated. A good collaboration between each parts will result in a successful conference.

In RSF development journey, we always learn and make our utmost effort to manage conferences effectively and efficiently. To achieve this, we complete each process by creating a system that embraces every process and help to answer various challenges in managing conference. We create a global research ecosystem that includes: Scholarvein as our integrated conference operating system, Research Synergy Institute as an enhancement and learning platform, RSF Press as an integrated international journals system, and Reviewer Track as a hub for worldwide reviewers. We will keep track a lot of important moving parts in every process. Therefore, we are open to any collaborative cooperation to help managing successful scientific event.