Several years ago, I was spending a bit of time one weekend with my daughter when my phone pinged with an email alert.

“Just a minute,” I told her as I looked down at the screen and began to respond – to which she replied: “That’s your favourite phrase these days.” Then she said something that really struck a chord.

“Mum, if you reply, won’t the person feel like they also have to reply to you?”

I’ve been thinking about that short exchange a lot recently. It has been heartening to see how the industry has recently engaged with the subject of mental wellbeing, and I was pleased to participate in TTG’s latest Get Travel Talking seminar on the issue late last month.

But for me, it’s a pity it’s taken a global pandemic and the near-collapse of our much-loved sector for us to address what’s been a ticking time bomb for a while.

I think we’ve all been guilty – and I? include myself in this, as that exchange with my daughter showed – of letting our grasp of priorities slip as the speed and ubiquity of our industry has grown in the past decade. 

Who among us hasn’t struggled to keep up with a relentless pace, where we seem to be working harder and harder for ever-smaller returns; or the constant cycle of crises that expose our creaking regulatory infrastructure; or the fragmenting of the landscape as we chase our data tails in search of an ever-more elusive ROI? 

Then there are the meetings or the conferences where I think we’ll all admit that variations on the same themes have been discussed for years. Or the awards events. Or the overseas trips.

I could go on. And I am aware that can all sound ungrateful and, well, perhaps a little hypocritical. After all, I’ve enjoyed the bene?fits of a lifelong career in the travel industry, and I’ve had some wonderful experiences and made good friends.

But I’ve also been the one replying to emails or WhatsApping colleagues in the evenings and at weekends – even from my sun lounger during my “holidays” – and generally letting my work life encroach into times and situations where it shouldn’t have.

I know from conversations with my peers that I’m not alone in this – although we tell ourselves we were doing what was “normal”. But the past few months have convinced me that if the phrase “new normal” means anything, it should mean we don’t return to that old unstable work-life balance.

Instead of making a virtue of being “always on” and lionising people emailing work from their hospital beds, let’s put the phones down, disengage from the noise and be more in the moment of where we are and who we’re with. 

Yes, we love our industry, and yes we want it to build back better – but that won’t happen if we allow ourselves to keep making the same mistakes of the past.