L&D During COVID: The Lessons We Don’t Like to Admit

When COVID hit, hospitality and cruising didn’t just shut down.

They were exposed.

Every beautifully choreographed training room, every polished workshop, every “high-engagement” session—we suddenly saw how dependent we were on the room, not the learning.

And the moment those rooms disappeared, the illusion disappeared with them.

Trainers who built their style on energy, theatrics, and crowd dynamics had to face a brutal question:

If you remove the performance, does the learning still hold?

For many, the answer was uncomfortable.

So the industry had to evolve. Fast.

Full-day workshops were chopped down into ruthless virtual refreshers on Teams, Zoom, and Google Meets. The fluff died instantly. What survived were tight micro-learning bursts, honest conversations, and only the essentials that actually shift behaviour.

And here’s the twist:

People learnt faster.

Crew and hospitality teams across the world absorbed more from a 12-minute scenario than they ever did in a decorated training room. Not because virtual is magical. But because the noise was finally stripped away.

COVID forced L&D to grow up.

Relevance beat entertainment.

Clarity beat charisma.

Truth beat theatrics.

And it reminded us that learning was never about how loud the trainer is.

It’s about how real the message is.

Today, training rooms are full again. Ships are running full. But the smartest L&D leaders aren’t returning to pre-COVID habits. Once you see what lean, raw, no-nonsense learning can do, you don’t unsee it.

Good learning survives.

Weak learning doesn’t.

That’s the line the industry hesitates to say.

I won’t.

COVID didn’t disrupt L&D.

It revealed it.

And the ones who adapted became sharper, leaner, and impossible to ignore.

Some lessons fade. These never will.

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