The coronavirus pandemic has affected many businesses in the world, mostly those dealing with personalized services. The situation became worse after almost every region in the world got affected, affecting millions of people.
Most businesses were affected by governments’ measures to prevent the spread of the virus, including social distancing, staying at home, and avoiding contacts. Lockdown was the worst thing that ever happened to most industries, as some ended up shutting down entirely due to a lack of customers. Below are some of the worst affected industries.
1.Sports and Entertainment
Most entertainment scenes and sports avenues closed due to this coronavirus pandemic. This closure got facilitated by the self-isolation rules, keeping distance, and staying at home measures. Companies like Disney and Universal Studios had to shut down completely to prevent the mass gathering, which got feared to spread the virus further.
Most games, including Football, have had to go without fans due to fear of triggering the spread, with some movie threats incorporating few audiences or shutting down completely.
Despite the above negative impact, other areas recorded positive change, including game downloads and movie rentals, which people watched and played at home. Video streaming companies, including Netflix and video calling apps such as Zoom, continue recording high sales volumes.
2.Local Market Places
With stay at home regulations and restricted traveling, most companies recorded low volume sales in the physical businesses, while online business gained momentum. Others opted to bring goods and services close to consumers, including having stores in the neighborhood. This situation has led to a demand in commercial space where people are trying to set up businesses near residential areas to reach their target markets. Such measures have led to contact-free deliveries where customers only pick goods from the stores. Online markets are also gaining ground, whereby people are buying groceries, food, electronics, etc. and having them delivered to nearby pick stations.
3.Travel and Tourism
Travel and tourism is the most hit industry by the coronavirus pandemic. The reason is because of the lockdowns and the restricted traveling measures.
This situation has dramatically affected the traveling business and tourism, both locally and internationally. A good example is the closing of borders, which made airlines ground their airplanes until the situation gets to normal. Besides grounding the airlines, most tourist hotels had to shut down, rendering employees jobless since companies had to cut costs to remain afloat.
4.Retail and Commerce
The COVID-19 has also negatively affected the retail and commerce industry. Most malls, supermarkets, and retail outlets had to shut down due to a few clients caused by restrictive measures to combat the virus. People also kept away from crowded areas and social gatherings to avoid contracting the disease.
Nowadays, most shopping gets carried online. The same case got applied to the retail business with an exemption for those situated in the neighborhoods. Digital commerce businesses have picked up due to people making purchases online, despite having trust issues buying goods online.
5.Financial Technology
With the closure of businesses and loss of jobs, financial markets and the global economy were also affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Currently, people are only making safer investments in the stock markets, leaving others at bay.
The overall Fintech sector recorded a drop in transactions, with people protecting themselves against the virus spread by taking precautionary measures. Most investors are investing less than expected, while others decided to save their money and take a break from investing. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum got affected, too, making them have a significant drop in market share.
6.Insurance
Despite insurance companies getting a boost with particular demands caused by the coronavirus pandemic, most went down due to travel restrictions. The virus’s positive impact includes the rising demand for health and coverage covers, which records over a 40% increase.
On the contrary, travel insurers suffered due to the closure of borders and restricted traveling as people stay at home. Currently, there is less business and vacation travel. Companies doing any of the above got impacted positively or negatively, depending on the insurance package they are selling.
These have been challenging moments for most businesses, while others record higher sales thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic. The essential services, including agriculture and medical care, got least affected by the epidemic. Others were fast enough to develop and adopt better ways of pushing their products into the market to counter-attack the pandemic loss.
What now stands are companies to diversify modes of selling and promoting their products and services to stay afloat in the market until when the situation gets back to normal.
