Chris Pouney, senior consultant, GoldSpring Consulting
With
a probability of 1 in 27 million, you have more chance of being struck by
lightning than you do of catching Covid on an aircraft – so said airline
industry body IATA to howls of delight by the beleaguered travel industry.
The
eagle-eyed among readers though were keen to point out that just two weeks
earlier, IATA member Qatar Airways reported (with equal excitement) that their
own studies showed a rather different ratio of 1 in 8,000.
Worse
was to follow for IATA when Dr. David Freedman, whose work was cited in the
IATA report, described the calculations as “bad math” and refused to take part
in publicity activity.
This
clumsy dance with data has left our industry with some damage control to
do.
While
IATA itself maintains that the calculation is “relevant and credible”, there is
little doubt that the report – and resulting negative publicity – left people
outside the travel industry (presumably the very people it was intended to
influence) scratching their heads and questioning the integrity and credibility
of such reports.
We
all have vested interest in getting flights full again, but our message – and
the data backing it – needs more stress testing before we ask corporates to get
behind it. Is 1 in 27 million a number we can really ask travel managers to
take to CEOs tasked with making critical decisions on employee wellbeing?
The
travel industry is not the only sector full of often contradictory statements
about what is and is not real risk when it comes to resuming business
activity. To minimise this, and to
maintain (even regain) credibility, we can keep the following tenets in mind:
• Ensure
researchers, authors, and cited contributors are all on the same page with
regard to findings;
• Call
out and explain where findings are vastly different to other seemingly
identical pieces of research;
• Deploy
transparent, robust and accurate methodology from which to draw its findings.
Even
if the above controls are in place, reliability still can be challenged. How
does the travel industry create a compelling and credible message that will
resonate far beyond our own industry ears?
It
is hard to convert an incredibly complex set of statistics into consumable and
meaningful soundbites. We all know
numbers can be manipulated to suit an agenda or bolster weak arguments. It is
this bias, or even perceived bias, that our industry can seek to avoid. Good
journalists live and breathe this principle in every word they write.
The
reality today is that published research is sponsored, in one sense or
another. In the case of Covid travel recovery research, reports are likely
commissioned by industry bodies or suppliers who have a vested interest in
people returning to travel.
Naturally,
this will create cynicism from discerning readers. Therefore, potential bias must
be addressed and mitigated with rigour elsewhere in the scoping, production,
publication and dissemination process.
Because
bias creates doubt in the eyes of the reader and brings credibility into
question, industry research and reports commissioned can strive to avoid the
following types of bias:
• Confirmation bias: the
tendency to search for, interpret, favour, and recall information in a way that
confirms one's beliefs;
• File drawer bias: it
is rather accepted that when research is commissioned by companies with an
interest in the results, then if the intended results fail to materialise, the
report would simply be filed away and not see the light of day;
• Selection bias: the
conscious or unconscious bias introduced into a study by the way individuals,
groups or data are selected for analysis, where the sample obtained is not
representative of the population intended to be analysed.
In
the case of the IATA study, Reuters reports that Dr. Freedman stated, “It
was bad math. 1.2 billion passengers during 2020 is not a fair denominator
because hardly anybody was tested… the absence of evidence is not evidence of
absence.”
For
the travel industry to succeed in persuading its own buyers and people outside
of our bubble to take the travel risk, we need to critically challenge future
findings.
Ask
whether it is something a travel manager can stake their reputation on when it
is run up the ladder. Ask whether it would stand up to a level of scrutiny from
a non-invested audience. Is everyone involved and cited in the project on the
same page? Are there findings already published that contradict the results?
Only when we
critically assess the information before us can the travel industry stake its
story on research and data outcomes. The result will be a consistent, bullet
proof, believable and compelling message that can really influence
organisations to start travelling again.