The year 2020 saw COVID-19 devastating the international and national travel and tourism industries globally. Yet the pandemic also generated renewed understandings of, and innovative possibilities for, the crucial relationships among travel and tourism, customer relationship management (CRM) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) that post pandemic strategies must mobilize if these industries are to emerge
strengthened and transformed. This is presenting a new theorization of travel and tourism foundations entitled the Model of Travel and Tourism Alliances. This model posits alliances – conceptualized to build on the distinctive affordances of the travel and tourism industries – as the driver of innovation and sustainability that reengineers CRM and CSR in the radically different post-COVID world. This driver depends in turn on a retheorized relationship between multinational travel corporations (MNCs) and business process outsourcing corporations (BPOs). The model is demonstrated by the author’s experiential knowledge as a leading travel entrepreneur in several countries.