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What next for travel and tourism? Here's what the experts say

In many countries, more than 80% of travel and tourism spending actually comes from the domestic market. Image:  Unsplash/Surface

.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo{-webkit-transition:all 0.15s ease-out;transition:all 0.15s ease-out;cursor:pointer;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;outline:none;color:inherit;}.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo:hover,.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo[data-hover]{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo:focus,.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo[data-focus]{box-shadow:0 0 0 3px rgba(168,203,251,0.5);} Julie Masiga

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Stay up to date:.

• In 2020 alone, the travel and tourism sector lost $4.5 trillion and 62 million jobs globally.
• But as the world recovers from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, travel and tourism can bounce back as an inclusive, sustainable, and resilient sector.
• Two experts highlight some of the key transformations in the sector going forward during the World Economic Forum's Our World in Transformation series.

The Travel & Tourism sector was one of the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving not only companies but also tourism-driven economies severely affected by shutdowns, travel restrictions and the disappearance of international travel.

In 2020 alone, the sector lost $4.5 trillion and 62 million jobs, impacting the living standards and well-being of communities across the globe. Moreover, the halt in international travel gave both leisure and business travellers the chance to consider the impact of their choices on the climate and environment.

Amid shifting demand dynamics and future opportunities and risks, a more inclusive, sustainable and resilient travel and tourism sector can be - and needs to be - built.

The World Economic Forum's Travel & Tourism Development Index 2021 finds that embedding inclusivity, sustainability and resilience into the travel and tourism sector as it recovers, will ensure it can continue to be a driver of global connectivity, peace and economic and social progress.

We spoke to Sandra Carvao , Chief of Market Intelligence and Competitiveness at the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), and Liz Ortiguera , CEO of the Pacific Asia Travel Association in Thailand (PATA), and asked them to highlight some of the key areas of risk and opportunity in the sector during an episode of the World Economic Forum's Our World in Transformation series.

Have you read?

Travel & tourism development index 2021: rebuilding for a sustainable and resilient future, towards resilience and sustainability: travel and tourism development recovery, how can we really achieve sustainability in the travel sector, what are some of the top global trends you're witnessing currently in the travel and tourism sector.

Liz Ortiguera: Given the extended lockdown that we had on travel with the pandemic, vacation for friends and relatives (VFR) is now a high priority for people who haven’t been in touch for a long time thanks to the pandemic. So, people are reconnecting. And that kind of links to the second trend, which is multi-purpose or blended travel. Never before, particularly now that we can connect digitally through Zoom, has the ability to work from anywhere enabled travellers to cover multiple purposes, like visits with friends and multiple business trips. So, we'll find that the duration of travel and the length of stay is longer. And third is the continued high focus on safety and wellness which is top of mind for travellers due to the pandemic. All travel is wellness-related now.

Sandra Carvao: I think there is a bigger concern with sustainability, which is very welcome in our industry. Consumers, particularly the younger generation, are much more aware of the impact they have, not only on the environment but also socially and on the communities they live in. We've also seen an increase in expenditure per trip, so I think people are very eager to go outside, and they're staying longer. And on the other side, I think there are some challenges: we’re seeing a rise in late bookings because restrictions can change at short notice and that’s having an impact on the decisions of travellers. This is putting pressure on the industry in terms of planning and anticipating fluctuations in demand.

Social media surveys have shown that travellers who have immersive experiences are more likely to post about them, which is good for the industry.

What is community-based tourism and why is it important?

Sandra Carvao: One of the positive impacts of the pandemic is that people are looking for local experiences and are spending more time with communities. So, the concept of community-based tourism is obviously one that puts the community at the core of every development, ensuring that it's engaged and empowered and that it benefits. At the UNWTO, we worked with the G20 and the Saudi presidency back in 2020 and produced a framework for tourism development in communities, which states that communities need to be part of the planning and management of tourism activities. We need to go beyond traditional definitions of community to a point where the industry leans on partnerships between the public and private sectors and communities.

Liz Ortiguera: In July 2022, PATA is hosting a destination-marketing forum and one of the key themes is community-based tourism. The purpose is really to put the community and authenticity-in-culture activities at the heart of the travel experience. There are benefits for all stakeholders. One is that travellers can have an authentic experience. They're not in overcrowded, touristic locations and they experience something new and unique within the community. These experiences are designed in partnership with communities who get the benefit of financial inclusion, and if activities are designed properly, the reinforcement of their cultural heritage. Governments also engage in economic development more broadly across countries. Another interesting trend is creative tourism, which means you create an experience for tourists to participate in, like a dance lesson, or a cooking lesson. Social media surveys have shown that travellers who have these kinds of immersive experiences are more likely to post about them online and that's good for the industry.

It is important to emphasize that virtual experiences, while they are a fun tool, can never replace visiting a destination.

How is technology and innovation helping to leverage cultural resources?

Sandra Carvao: One interesting trend we’re seeing is that more and more people are booking trips directly, so communities need to be supported to digitize their systems. Education and upskilling of communities are important so that they can leverage digital platforms to market themselves. From the tourists’ perspective, it is important to emphasize that virtual experiences, while they are a fun tool, can never replace visiting a destination.

Liz Ortiguera: People have been living virtually for more than two years. Amazing innovations have emerged, such as virtual reality and augmented reality, and all kinds of applications and tools. But the important thing is the experience. The destination. Real-world experiences need to remain front and centre. Technology tools should be viewed as enablers and not the core experience. And when it comes to staff, technology can really democratize education. There’s an opportunity to mobilize a mobile-first approach for those who are on the frontlines, or out in the field, and can’t easily access computers, but need to get real-time information.

How is the sector dealing with labour shortages and re-employment of the workforce?

Liz Ortiguera: Labour shortages are much more dynamic in North America and in Europe. But it’s having a knock-on effect on Asia. If, for example, their air carriers are limited by staff and they have to cancel flights, which we're very much seeing out of Europe, seating capacity then becomes a limiting factor in the recovery of Asia Pacific. That's the main constraint right now. And compounding that is the rising price of fuel. But people in the Asia Pacific are keen to get reemployed.

Sandra Carvao: Labour shortages are a priority for the sector in countries around the world. Many workers left the sector during the pandemic and the uncertainty that surrounded the measures taken to contain it left many people unsure of whether the sector would recover. It is time to address things like conditions, scheduling, and work/life balance, all things which have been top of mind for workers during the pandemic. As the sector recovers, we need time to bring new hires on board and to train them to take over where those who switched jobs left off.

Are we seeing a growing trend towards domestic tourism?

Sandra Carvao: We’re talking about 9 billion people travelling within their own countries. And in many countries, for example in Germany, more than 80% of the tourism spending actually comes from the domestic market, similarly in countries like Spain and even smaller economies. Whenever it's possible to travel again, domestic markets tend to be more resilient. They kick off first mostly due to perceptions of safety and security issues. As the world economy recovers from the pandemic, there is a good opportunity for nations to rethink their strategy, look at the domestic market in a different way, and leverage different products for domestic tourists.

When it comes to sustainable tourism, how quickly could we mainstream eco-friendly modes of transportation?

Sandra Carvao: Transport is one of the key contributors to energy impacts and tourism. But it's also important that we look at the whole value chain. The UNWTO together with the One Planet Sustainable Tourism Programme just launched the Glasgow Declaration, which includes green commitments from destinations and companies. We’re seeing a strong movement in the airline industry to reduce emissions. But I think, obviously, technological developments will be very important. But it's also very important to look at market shifts. And we can't forget small islands and developing states that rely on long-haul air travel. It’s important to make sure that we invest in making the problem much less impactful.

Liz Ortiguera: 'Travel and tourism' is such a broad encompassing term that it’s not fair to call it an industry: it is actually a sector of many industries. The pandemic taught us how broad the impact of the sector is in terms of sustainability. There's a big movement in terms of destination resilience, which is the foundation for achieving sustainability in the journey to net-zero. We now have standards to mitigate that impact including meetings-and-events (MIE) standards and standards for tour operators. There are multiple areas within our industry where progress is being made. And I'm really encouraged by the fact that there is such a focus not just within the sector but also among consumers.

This interview was first done at the World Economic Forum's studios in Geneva as part of 'Our World in Transformation' - a live interactive event series for our digital members. To watch all the episodes and join future sessions, please subscribe here .

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Travelers may find it difficult to empathize with locals, according to experts. Here, tourists in 2016 buy fruit juice at a market stall in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Travel is said to increase cultural understanding. Does it?

While researchers say travel does affect the brain’s neural pathways, true empathy remains an elusive destination.

Empathy is commonly defined as “putting yourself in another person’s shoes” or “feeling the emotional states of others.” It’s a critical social tool that creates social bridges by promoting shared experiences and producing compassionate behavior. But can empathy be learned? And can travel help facilitate this learning? The answer is complicated. “Research has shown that empathy is not simply inborn, but can actually be taught,” writes psychotherapist F. Diane Barth in Psychology Today . While past research has indicated that empathy is an unteachable trait, newer research—including a 2017 Harvard study —suggests that the “neurobiologically based competency” of empathy is mutable and can be taught under the right circumstances. Whether seeing the world actually opens travelers’ minds—that it makes travelers more empathetic—is up for debate. In a 2018 Harris Poll of 1,300 business travelers, 87 percent said that business trips helped them to be more empathetic to others, reports Quartz . And in a 2010 study , Columbia Business School professor Adam Galinsky found that travel “increases awareness of underlying connections and associations” with other cultures. While self-defined empathy and awareness are unreliable measurements, it stands to reason that cross-cultural exposure through travel would at least create conditions for checking conscious and unconscious biases. “If we are to move in the direction of a more empathic society and a more compassionate world, it is clear that working to enhance our native capacities to empathize is critical to strengthening individual, community, national, and international bonds,” writes Helen Riess, associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and author of the 2017 report.

But the coronavirus pandemic and, more recently, the global Black Lives Matter protests have forced an uncomfortable reckoning—that all the travel in the world might not be enough to engender the deep cross-cultural awareness people need now.

“There’s this false adage that travel opens minds, but that’s not [a built-in] fact about what travel does,” says Travis Levius, a Black travel journalist and hospitality consultant based in London and Atlanta. “Travel does not automatically make you a better person,” nor does it clue you into “what’s going on in terms of race relations.”

Black Travel Alliance founder Martina Jones-Johnson agrees, noting that tourism boards have made it “overwhelmingly clear that travel doesn’t necessarily build empathy.”

The lack of diversity within the travel industry itself suggests that there’s much work to be done to make the industry as inclusive as the world of travel consumers. According to a 2019 annual report by the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, workers in the leisure and hospitality industry were overwhelmingly white. Consumers, meanwhile, say they want to spend their money on travel companies whose employees reflect the world they work in, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council .

Additionally, companies that embrace inclusivity may have a better chance of avoiding tone-deaf messages , such as using “free at last”—the line is from Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Dream” speech—to caption a billboard depicting white children jumping into the Florida Keys. The advertisement, which has since been taken down, launched in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis that sparked worldwide protests against police brutality.

(Related: Learn why it’s important to have diverse perspectives in travel.)

Karfa Diallo leads a tour of sites related to the trans-Atlantic slave trade in Bordeaux, France, in June 2020. Participating in activities that amplify marginalized voices and experiences can go a long way toward developing empathy, say experts.

A road paved with good intentions

Interestingly, modern tourism has fairly empathic origins. In the 1850s, Thomas Cook used new railway systems to develop short-haul leisure travel as respites for hard-working British laborers, according to Freya Higgins-Desbiolles, a senior lecturer on tourism management at the University of South Australia.

A hundred years later the United Nations declared reasonable working hours, paid holidays, and “rest and leisure” as human rights . By the 1960s, spurred by related movements to increase holiday time, the leisure sector had coalesced into a full-fledged professional industry.

Since then, the World Tourism Organization and international aid groups have championed tourism as both “a vital force for world peace [that] can provide the moral and intellectual basis for international understanding and interdependence,” as well as an economic development strategy for poorer nations.

But not everyone agrees that the travel industry has lived up to these lofty goals. In recent decades, it has been accused of doing just the opposite. As Stephen Wearing wrote nearly 20 years ago : “tourism perpetuates inequality” because multinational corporations from capitalist countries hold all the economic and resource power over developing nations.

(Related: This is how national parks are fighting racism.)

These days, inequality is baked into the very process of traveling, says veteran Time magazine foreign correspondent and Roads & Kingdoms co-founder Nathan Thornburgh. “Your frequent flier status, the stupid little cordon separating the boarding lines, the way you take an Uber or cab from the airport after you land, not a bus or colectivo or matatu —those all reinforce divisions, not empathy,” he writes in an email. “And that’s just getting to a place.”

Empathy’s downsides

Experts say developing empathy isn’t easy and comes with a host of problems. Joseph M. Cheer, a professor at Wakayama University’s Center for Tourism Research in Japan, notes that empathy inherently “others” another person.

In his 2019 study of westerners on a bike tour in Cambodia, Cheer found that despite the prosocial aspects of the experience—visiting local non-governmental organizations, interacting with local Cambodians—post-tour interviews revealed that the tourists didn’t understand the cultural context of the outing. The visitors leaned into problematic tropes like “happy,” “lovely,” and “generous” when describing locals or simply saw Cambodians as service providers.

This “othering” bias, Cheer says, becomes more noticeable the greater the distance between tourists and locals, and especially so in strictly transactional encounters, such as in hotels.

A worker at a resort in Bali. Researchers say visitors should make a commitment to understand local cultures by moving past transactional interactions.

Our individual travel experiences oppose our best intentions, says travel writer Bani Amor, who has written extensively on race, place, and power.

“The stated [positive] intentions are completely contradictive to what happens in the tourism industry and how oppressive it is to BIPOC [Black, indigenous, and people of color] around the world, how tourism laborers are being treated, and how they’re being dispossessed, not having a right to their own land and to enjoy our own places,” says Amor, who has worked in the tourism industry in their ancestral home of Ecuador.

“You can only really know your own experience,” adds Anu Taranath, a racial equity professor at the University of Washington Seattle and a second-generation immigrant.

“I think we can develop empathetic feelings and sort of crack open our sense of self to include other people’s experiences in it. We can only deepen our own understanding of who we are in an unequal world and how that makes us feel and how that motivates us to shift our life in some way or another.”

I think in its purest form, empathy is basically impossible. I can weep for you, but I can’t weep as you. Nathan Thornburgh , founder, Roads & Kingdoms

Or as Thornburgh puts it: “I think in its purest form, empathy is basically impossible. I can weep for you, but I can’t weep as you.”

Traveling deeper

While experts conclude that travel may not inspire enough empathy to turn tourists into social justice activists, the alternative—not traveling at all—may actually be worse.

“[B]ecause travel produces encounters between strangers, it is likely to prompt empathetic-type imaginings, which simply wouldn’t be there without the proximity created by travel,” says Hazel Tucker in a 2016 study published in the Annals of Tourism. It’s also one reason why it’s important to expose children to travel at an early age.

Yet truly transformational experiences require more than just showing up with a suitcase. It requires energy, effort, and commitment on the part of tourists, as well as specific conditions, says Higgins-Desbiolles. “Visitors need to be prepped for the interaction so that they are ready to engage with the people on an equal level,” she notes.

Taranath’s book Beyond Guilt Trips: Mindful Travel in an Unequal World may provide some starting points. “It’s an invitation to think more carefully about our good intentions and where they really need to be challenged,” Taranath explains. “How do you think about identity and difference in an unequal world? What does it actually look like?”

Additionally, Tucker suggests embracing what she calls “unsettled empathy”: learning about the cultures you’re planning to visit and sitting with uncomfortable legacies of colonialism, slavery, genocide, and displacement from which no destinations are exempt.

Barbara Manigault, a Gullah sweet grass basket weaver, practices her craft in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. American tourists with limited travel opportunities can find many places in the U.S. to learn more about other cultures.

That background can be the basis for meaningful conversations, which Cheer found are “the key element that prompted empathy.” Thornburgh adds that travelers should seek out places where there is “an equal and humanistic exchange, or something approaching it, between the visitors and the visited.”

(Related: The E.U. has banned American travelers. So where can they go? )

Toward that end, experts generally ruled out cruises. Instead, immersive experiences like Black Heritage Tours that amplify historically marginalized voices provide better opportunities for meaningful connections.

Fortunately for would-be travelers, those opportunities can be found even in these pandemic times, when many countries are restricting international travel, especially for Americans.

“We are so lucky in this country that the whole world has come here to build their lives, in big cities and small, and that we have Black and [Native American] communities throughout,” says Thornburgh. “Go to their restaurants, lend your talents to their schools, help them raise money for their playgrounds.

“You want travel? You want to experience different cultures? Start at home. Start now.”

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• CULTURAL TOURISM
• PEOPLE AND CULTURE

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Move Over, Sustainable Travel. Regenerative Travel Has Arrived.

Can a post-vaccine return to travel be smarter and greener than it was before March 2020? Some in the tourism industry are betting on it.

By Elaine Glusac

Tourism, which grew faster than the global gross domestic product for the past nine years, has been decimated by the pandemic. Once accounting for 10 percent of employment worldwide, the sector is poised to shed 121 million jobs, with losses projected at a minimum of $3.4 trillion, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council.

But in the lull, some in the tourism industry are planning for a post-vaccine return to travel that’s better than it was before March 2020 — greener, smarter and less crowded. If sustainable tourism , which aims to counterbalance the social and environmental impacts associated with travel, was the aspirational outer limit of ecotourism before the pandemic, the new frontier is “regenerative travel,” or leaving a place better than you found it.

“Sustainable tourism is sort of a low bar. At the end of the day, it’s just not making a mess of the place,” said Jonathon Day, an associate professor focused on sustainable tourism at Purdue University. “Regenerative tourism says, let’s make it better for future generations.”

Defining regeneration

Regenerative travel has its roots in regenerative development and design, which includes buildings that meet the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design or LEED standards. The concept has applications across many fields, including regenerative agriculture, which aims to restore soils and sequester carbon.

“Generally, sustainability, as practiced today, is about slowing down the degradation,” said Bill Reed, an architect and principal of Regenesis Group, a design firm based in Massachusetts and New Mexico that has been practicing regenerative design, including tourism projects, since 1995. He described efforts like fuel efficiency and reduced energy use as “a slower way to die.”

“Regeneration is about restoring and then regenerating the capability to live in a new relationship in an ongoing way,” he added.

With most travel suspended during the pandemic, regenerative travel remains at the starting gate. But in the lull, it’s the new buzz. Six nonprofit organizations, including the Center for Responsible Travel and Sustainable Travel International , have joined together as the Future of Tourism coalition, which aims to “build a better tomorrow.”

Twenty-two travel groups, including tour operators like G Adventures , destination marketers such as the Slovenian Tourist Board, and organizations like the Adventure Travel Trade Association , have signed on to the coalition’s 13 guiding principles, including “demand fair income distribution” and “choose quality over quantity.”

Tourism New Zealand, the country’s tourism organization, is talking about measuring its success not solely in economic terms, but against the well-being of the country, considering nature, human health and community identities. And travel leaders in Hawaii are discussing repositioning the state as a cultural destination in hopes of re-engaging islanders, many of whom are fed up with overtourism, in the vitality of tourism.

To flesh out these broad strokes, Mr. Day, the associate professor, points to the concept of a circular economy, which aims to design waste out of the system, keep materials in use through reuse, repair and upcycling, and regenerate natural systems.

“Tourism is just at the beginning of this process of how we can apply circular economy ideas to the system,” he said.

Regeneration in action

Having a truly regenerative travel experience may be a unicorn, but a few operators are pointing the way.

Regenesis worked on the development of Playa Viva , a small resort south of Zihuatanejo, Mexico, on the Pacific Coast, which opened in 2009. The firm’s assessment of the more than 200-acre property took in the beaches, the bird-filled estuary and ancient ruins as well as the problems of turtle poaching and poor schools in the village. Ultimately, the small town of Juluchuca became the gateway to the property; an organic agricultural system benefited both the property and local residents; and a 2 percent fee added to any stay funds a trust that invests in community development.

“Rather than a resort helicoptering in and taking up land, they said, ‘We are the village,’” Mr. Reed said. “It’s a paradigm shift.”

Playa Viva is one of 45 resorts belonging to Regenerative Travel , a booking agency that vets members based on metrics such as carbon usage, employee well-being, immersive guest activities and sourcing local food. To date, qualifications for membership have been handled internally, but in September the company plans to launch a benchmarking system to demonstrate their regenerative progress.

OneSeed Expeditions , an adventure tour operator based in Denver, aims to couple travel with economic development. It uses 10 percent of its proceeds to provide zero-interest loans to local nongovernmental organizations where it operates in places like Nepal and Peru. The local groups then issue microloans to community entrepreneurs in businesses such as farming and retail.

“The areas of greatest need are not necessarily in areas of the greatest tourism attractions,” said Chris Baker, the founder of OneSeed Expeditions. “We want to use tourism to be able to benefit people outside of those areas.”

Regenerative tourism addresses impacts holistically, from destination and community perspectives as well as environmental. Intrepid Travel , the small-group tour company that, until the pandemic, ran more than 1,000 itineraries globally, has been carbon neutral since 2010. This year it extended its pledge to cover 125 percent of its carbon emissions.

“There’s this notion that business success means you have to do harm to the world,” said James Thornton, the chief executive of Intrepid Travel, which became a B Corporation, an entity dedicated to benefiting workers, customers, the community and environment, as well as shareholders, in 2018. “When the new normality returns, it shouldn’t come at the expense of sustainability.”

Correcting overtourism

Implicit in many discussions about regenerative tourism is the threat of returning to overtourism, which accounted for excessive numbers of visitors in places like Dubrovnik that ultimately had to cap the number of cruise ships allowed to dock daily in high season.

“For so long, tourism success was defined by growing the numbers — numbers of visitors, numbers of cruise passengers,” said Gregory Miller, the executive director of the Center for Responsible Travel, a nonprofit group that advocates for sustainable travel. “Even before the pandemic, there was a need for rebalancing.”

For example, the current recession may have bought Hawaii a few years before its tourism figures return to what they were in 2019, when 10 million travelers visited the islands — and that was up from 6.5 million a decade earlier — resulting in painfully long queues to climb Diamond Head at sunrise. In a 2018 survey by the Hawaiian Tourism Authority, two-thirds of respondents agreed that “This island is being run for tourists at the expense of local people.”

“We have the curse of a strong brand,” said Frank Haas, a former vice president with the Hawaiian Tourism Authority and an independent tourism consultant. “We’re so well known as a sun destination that people overlook the other aspects, the Hawaiian culture, the royal past, the interesting geological and natural attractions.”

He thinks it will require more coordinated management — currently, a variety of federal, state and local authorities regulate parks and facilities like airports — as well as creative entrepreneurs to expand cultural tourism by appealing to travelers interested in food, art, history or music.

Who defines ‘better’ tourism?

Determining what makes a place better and who makes that decision requires local involvement, according to regenerative tourism proponents.

VisitFlanders, the tourism organization representing the Northern Belgium region, used local input to rethink its mission, repositioning its stance from growing travel for the sake of the economy to creating an “economy of meaning,” according to its master plan . That includes, among other initiatives, linking visitors with locals who share their passions for things like history or food and making storytelling central to sites like its World War I battlefields.

“We’ve managed to shift the thinking from having their primary objective be about growing the numbers, to creating flourishing destinations, flourishing communities and having them say what kind of tourism they want,” said Anna Pollock, the founder of Conscious Travel , an education and consulting enterprise devoted to positioning travel as a force for good, who worked with VisitFlanders.

A traveler’s role in regeneration

Ms. Pollock believes regenerative travel is a supply-side concept that asks operators to do more for the environment and community than they take from them. But travelers play a key role in demand.

“Become mindful of the fact that your trip is going to have a set of costs associated with it, which needs to be paid by somebody,” she said. “In the same way you think, ‘Should I buy that cheap T-shirt from the dime store down the road?,’ knowing it’s created by semi-slave labor. Now you’re thinking consciously about who do I buy it from and is it quality.”

The experience of the pandemic — when many are discovering the power of their pocketbooks in supporting local businesses like bookstores and restaurants — is, perhaps, the most instructive in demonstrating sustainability, even if the travel involved is within a few blocks of home.

“Travel is an important vote of your principles,” said Mr. Baker of OneSeed. “When you decide to put your time and resources into a trip, you’re affirming that’s the type of business you want out there.”

Sustainable travel, let alone regenerative travel, will still have to find solutions to the carbon emissions produced by air travel. Until the economy recovers, there’s likely to be less travel, more local travel, or slower travel by car, train, bike or foot. This moment of reflection, say proponents, is where regeneration begins.

“It’s about how to regenerate our relationship with life,” said Mr. Reed, the architect. “That’s a continual process. Our children will need that taught to them. Regeneration is a continual cycle of rebirth. That’s how we sustain the planet. You cannot have a sustainable planet without regeneration.”

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Articles on Tourism

Displaying 1 - 20 of 517 articles.

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Charlotte Gupta , CQUniversity Australia and Dean J. Miller , CQUniversity Australia

Welcome to NZ – now pay up: the risks and rewards of raising the foreign tourist tax

Tracy Harkison , Auckland University of Technology

The warming ocean is leaving coastal economies in hot water

Charles Colgan , Middlebury Institute of International Studies

Could Elvis’ Graceland hold a key to bridging America’s cultural divide?

Michael T. Bertrand , Tennessee State University

Sargassum is choking the Caribbean’s white sand beaches, fueling an economic and public health crisis

Farah Nibbs , University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Thirsty in paradise: Water crises are a growing problem across the Caribbean islands

Why you should expect to pay more tourist taxes – even though the evidence for them is unclear

Rhys ap Gwilym , Bangor University and Linda Osti , Bangor University

War in Gaza has plunged Israel’s tourism industry into a crisis it will struggle to recover from

Samuel Scanlon , University College Dublin

Climbers have turned Mount Everest into a high-altitude garbage dump, but sustainable solutions are within reach

Suzanne OConnell , Wesleyan University and Alton C. Byers , University of Colorado Boulder

Rough seas or smooth sailing? The cruise industry is booming despite environmental concerns

Frédéric Dimanche , Toronto Metropolitan University and Kelley A. McClinchey , Wilfrid Laurier University

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Peter Johnston , University of Cape Town

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Pablo Pereira-Doel , University of Surrey and Xavier Font , University of Surrey

Elephant tourism often involves cruelty – here are steps toward more humane, animal-friendly excursions

Michelle Szydlowski , Miami University

Marine protected areas safeguard more than ecology – they bring economic benefits to fisheries and tourism

Mark John Costello , Nord University

The problem with shaming people for Auschwitz selfies

Craig Wight , Edinburgh Napier University and Phiona Stanley , Edinburgh Napier University

Happy smiling African children: why school tourism in Zimbabwe shouldn’t be encouraged

Kathleen Smithers , Charles Sturt University

Too much heat in the kitchen: survey shows toxic work conditions mean many chefs are getting out

Shelagh K. Mooney , Auckland University of Technology ; Matthew Brenner , Southern Cross University , and Richard Robinson , The University of Queensland

Does hosting the Olympics, the World Cup or other major sports events really pay off?

Ivan Savin , ESCP Business School

Revving up tourism: Formula One and other big events look set to drive growth in the hospitality industry

Rachel J.C. Fu , University of Florida

Black travelers want authentic engagement, not checkboxes

Alana Dillette , San Diego State University and Stefanie Benjamin , University of Tennessee

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The future of tourism: Bridging the labor gap, enhancing customer experience

As travel resumes and builds momentum, it’s becoming clear that tourism is resilient—there is an enduring desire to travel. Against all odds, international tourism rebounded in 2022: visitor numbers to Europe and the Middle East climbed to around 80 percent of 2019 levels, and the Americas recovered about 65 percent of prepandemic visitors 1 “Tourism set to return to pre-pandemic levels in some regions in 2023,” United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), January 17, 2023. —a number made more significant because it was reached without travelers from China, which had the world’s largest outbound travel market before the pandemic. 2 “ Outlook for China tourism 2023: Light at the end of the tunnel ,” McKinsey, May 9, 2023.

Recovery and growth are likely to continue. According to estimates from the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) for 2023, international tourist arrivals could reach 80 to 95 percent of prepandemic levels depending on the extent of the economic slowdown, travel recovery in Asia–Pacific, and geopolitical tensions, among other factors. 3 “Tourism set to return to pre-pandemic levels in some regions in 2023,” United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), January 17, 2023. Similarly, the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) forecasts that by the end of 2023, nearly half of the 185 countries in which the organization conducts research will have either recovered to prepandemic levels or be within 95 percent of full recovery. 4 “Global travel and tourism catapults into 2023 says WTTC,” World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), April 26, 2023.

Longer-term forecasts also point to optimism for the decade ahead. Travel and tourism GDP is predicted to grow, on average, at 5.8 percent a year between 2022 and 2032, outpacing the growth of the overall economy at an expected 2.7 percent a year. 5 Travel & Tourism economic impact 2022 , WTTC, August 2022.

So, is it all systems go for travel and tourism? Not really. The industry continues to face a prolonged and widespread labor shortage. After losing 62 million travel and tourism jobs in 2020, labor supply and demand remain out of balance. 6 “WTTC research reveals Travel & Tourism’s slow recovery is hitting jobs and growth worldwide,” World Travel & Tourism Council, October 6, 2021. Today, in the European Union, 11 percent of tourism jobs are likely to go unfilled; in the United States, that figure is 7 percent. 7 Travel & Tourism economic impact 2022 : Staff shortages, WTTC, August 2022.

There has been an exodus of tourism staff, particularly from customer-facing roles, to other sectors, and there is no sign that the industry will be able to bring all these people back. 8 Travel & Tourism economic impact 2022 : Staff shortages, WTTC, August 2022. Hotels, restaurants, cruises, airports, and airlines face staff shortages that can translate into operational, reputational, and financial difficulties. If unaddressed, these shortages may constrain the industry’s growth trajectory.

The current labor shortage may have its roots in factors related to the nature of work in the industry. Chronic workplace challenges, coupled with the effects of COVID-19, have culminated in an industry struggling to rebuild its workforce. Generally, tourism-related jobs are largely informal, partly due to high seasonality and weak regulation. And conditions such as excessively long working hours, low wages, a high turnover rate, and a lack of social protection tend to be most pronounced in an informal economy. Additionally, shift work, night work, and temporary or part-time employment are common in tourism.

The industry may need to revisit some fundamentals to build a far more sustainable future: either make the industry more attractive to talent (and put conditions in place to retain staff for longer periods) or improve products, services, and processes so that they complement existing staffing needs or solve existing pain points.

One solution could be to build a workforce with the mix of digital and interpersonal skills needed to keep up with travelers’ fast-changing requirements. The industry could make the most of available technology to provide customers with a digitally enhanced experience, resolve staff shortages, and improve working conditions.

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Complementing concierges with chatbots.

The pace of technological change has redefined customer expectations. Technology-driven services are often at customers’ fingertips, with no queues or waiting times. By contrast, the airport and airline disruption widely reported in the press over the summer of 2022 points to customers not receiving this same level of digital innovation when traveling.

Imagine the following travel experience: it’s 2035 and you start your long-awaited honeymoon to a tropical island. A virtual tour operator and a destination travel specialist booked your trip for you; you connected via videoconference to make your plans. Your itinerary was chosen with the support of generative AI , which analyzed your preferences, recommended personalized travel packages, and made real-time adjustments based on your feedback.

Before leaving home, you check in online and QR code your luggage. You travel to the airport by self-driving cab. After dropping off your luggage at the self-service counter, you pass through security and the biometric check. You access the premier lounge with the QR code on the airline’s loyalty card and help yourself to a glass of wine and a sandwich. After your flight, a prebooked, self-driving cab takes you to the resort. No need to check in—that was completed online ahead of time (including picking your room and making sure that the hotel’s virtual concierge arranged for red roses and a bottle of champagne to be delivered).

While your luggage is brought to the room by a baggage robot, your personal digital concierge presents the honeymoon itinerary with all the requested bookings. For the romantic dinner on the first night, you order your food via the restaurant app on the table and settle the bill likewise. So far, you’ve had very little human interaction. But at dinner, the sommelier chats with you in person about the wine. The next day, your sightseeing is made easier by the hotel app and digital guide—and you don’t get lost! With the aid of holographic technology, the virtual tour guide brings historical figures to life and takes your sightseeing experience to a whole new level. Then, as arranged, a local citizen meets you and takes you to their home to enjoy a local family dinner. The trip is seamless, there are no holdups or snags.

This scenario features less human interaction than a traditional trip—but it flows smoothly due to the underlying technology. The human interactions that do take place are authentic, meaningful, and add a special touch to the experience. This may be a far-fetched example, but the essence of the scenario is clear: use technology to ease typical travel pain points such as queues, misunderstandings, or misinformation, and elevate the quality of human interaction.

Travel with less human interaction may be considered a disruptive idea, as many travelers rely on and enjoy the human connection, the “service with a smile.” This will always be the case, but perhaps the time is right to think about bringing a digital experience into the mix. The industry may not need to depend exclusively on human beings to serve its customers. Perhaps the future of travel is physical, but digitally enhanced (and with a smile!).

Digital solutions are on the rise and can help bridge the labor gap

Digital innovation is improving customer experience across multiple industries. Car-sharing apps have overcome service-counter waiting times and endless paperwork that travelers traditionally had to cope with when renting a car. The same applies to time-consuming hotel check-in, check-out, and payment processes that can annoy weary customers. These pain points can be removed. For instance, in China, the Huazhu Hotels Group installed self-check-in kiosks that enable guests to check in or out in under 30 seconds. 9 “Huazhu Group targets lifestyle market opportunities,” ChinaTravelNews, May 27, 2021.

Technology meets hospitality

In 2019, Alibaba opened its FlyZoo Hotel in Huangzhou, described as a “290-room ultra-modern boutique, where technology meets hospitality.” 1 “Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has a hotel run almost entirely by robots that can serve food and fetch toiletries—take a look inside,” Business Insider, October 21, 2019; “FlyZoo Hotel: The hotel of the future or just more technology hype?,” Hotel Technology News, March 2019. The hotel was the first of its kind that instead of relying on traditional check-in and key card processes, allowed guests to manage reservations and make payments entirely from a mobile app, to check-in using self-service kiosks, and enter their rooms using facial-recognition technology.

The hotel is run almost entirely by robots that serve food and fetch toiletries and other sundries as needed. Each guest room has a voice-activated smart assistant to help guests with a variety of tasks, from adjusting the temperature, lights, curtains, and the TV to playing music and answering simple questions about the hotel and surroundings.

The hotel was developed by the company’s online travel platform, Fliggy, in tandem with Alibaba’s AI Labs and Alibaba Cloud technology with the goal of “leveraging cutting-edge tech to help transform the hospitality industry, one that keeps the sector current with the digital era we’re living in,” according to the company.

Adoption of some digitally enhanced services was accelerated during the pandemic in the quest for safer, contactless solutions. During the Winter Olympics in Beijing, a restaurant designed to keep physical contact to a minimum used a track system on the ceiling to deliver meals directly from the kitchen to the table. 10 “This Beijing Winter Games restaurant uses ceiling-based tracks,” Trendhunter, January 26, 2022. Customers around the world have become familiar with restaurants using apps to display menus, take orders, and accept payment, as well as hotels using robots to deliver luggage and room service (see sidebar “Technology meets hospitality”). Similarly, theme parks, cinemas, stadiums, and concert halls are deploying digital solutions such as facial recognition to optimize entrance control. Shanghai Disneyland, for example, offers annual pass holders the option to choose facial recognition to facilitate park entry. 11 “Facial recognition park entry,” Shanghai Disney Resort website.

Automation and digitization can also free up staff from attending to repetitive functions that could be handled more efficiently via an app and instead reserve the human touch for roles where staff can add the most value. For instance, technology can help customer-facing staff to provide a more personalized service. By accessing data analytics, frontline staff can have guests’ details and preferences at their fingertips. A trainee can become an experienced concierge in a short time, with the help of technology.

Apps and in-room tech: Unused market potential

According to Skift Research calculations, total revenue generated by guest apps and in-room technology in 2019 was approximately $293 million, including proprietary apps by hotel brands as well as third-party vendors. 1 “Hotel tech benchmark: Guest-facing technology 2022,” Skift Research, November 2022. The relatively low market penetration rate of this kind of tech points to around $2.4 billion in untapped revenue potential (exhibit).

Even though guest-facing technology is available—the kind that can facilitate contactless interactions and offer travelers convenience and personalized service—the industry is only beginning to explore its potential. A report by Skift Research shows that the hotel industry, in particular, has not tapped into tech’s potential. Only 11 percent of hotels and 25 percent of hotel rooms worldwide are supported by a hotel app or use in-room technology, and only 3 percent of hotels offer keyless entry. 12 “Hotel tech benchmark: Guest-facing technology 2022,” Skift Research, November 2022. Of the five types of technology examined (guest apps and in-room tech; virtual concierge; guest messaging and chatbots; digital check-in and kiosks; and keyless entry), all have relatively low market-penetration rates (see sidebar “Apps and in-room tech: Unused market potential”).

While apps, digitization, and new technology may be the answer to offering better customer experience, there is also the possibility that tourism may face competition from technological advances, particularly virtual experiences. Museums, attractions, and historical sites can be made interactive and, in some cases, more lifelike, through AR/VR technology that can enhance the physical travel experience by reconstructing historical places or events.

Up until now, tourism, arguably, was one of a few sectors that could not easily be replaced by tech. It was not possible to replicate the physical experience of traveling to another place. With the emerging metaverse , this might change. Travelers could potentially enjoy an event or experience from their sofa without any logistical snags, and without the commitment to traveling to another country for any length of time. For example, Google offers virtual tours of the Pyramids of Meroë in Sudan via an immersive online experience available in a range of languages. 13 Mariam Khaled Dabboussi, “Step into the Meroë pyramids with Google,” Google, May 17, 2022. And a crypto banking group, The BCB Group, has created a metaverse city that includes representations of some of the most visited destinations in the world, such as the Great Wall of China and the Statue of Liberty. According to BCB, the total cost of flights, transfers, and entry for all these landmarks would come to $7,600—while a virtual trip would cost just over $2. 14 “What impact can the Metaverse have on the travel industry?,” Middle East Economy, July 29, 2022.

The metaverse holds potential for business travel, too—the meeting, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions (MICE) sector in particular. Participants could take part in activities in the same immersive space while connecting from anywhere, dramatically reducing travel, venue, catering, and other costs. 15 “ Tourism in the metaverse: Can travel go virtual? ,” McKinsey, May 4, 2023.

The allure and convenience of such digital experiences make offering seamless, customer-centric travel and tourism in the real world all the more pressing.

Three innovations to solve hotel staffing shortages

Is the future contactless.

Given the advances in technology, and the many digital innovations and applications that already exist, there is potential for businesses across the travel and tourism spectrum to cope with labor shortages while improving customer experience. Process automation and digitization can also add to process efficiency. Taken together, a combination of outsourcing, remote work, and digital solutions can help to retain existing staff and reduce dependency on roles that employers are struggling to fill (exhibit).

Depending on the customer service approach and direct contact need, we estimate that the travel and tourism industry would be able to cope with a structural labor shortage of around 10 to 15 percent in the long run by operating more flexibly and increasing digital and automated efficiency—while offering the remaining staff an improved total work package.

Outsourcing and remote work could also help resolve the labor shortage

While COVID-19 pushed organizations in a wide variety of sectors to embrace remote work, there are many hospitality roles that rely on direct physical services that cannot be performed remotely, such as laundry, cleaning, maintenance, and facility management. If faced with staff shortages, these roles could be outsourced to third-party professional service providers, and existing staff could be reskilled to take up new positions.

In McKinsey’s experience, the total service cost of this type of work in a typical hotel can make up 10 percent of total operating costs. Most often, these roles are not guest facing. A professional and digital-based solution might become an integrated part of a third-party service for hotels looking to outsource this type of work.

One of the lessons learned in the aftermath of COVID-19 is that many tourism employees moved to similar positions in other sectors because they were disillusioned by working conditions in the industry . Specialist multisector companies have been able to shuffle their staff away from tourism to other sectors that offer steady employment or more regular working hours compared with the long hours and seasonal nature of work in tourism.

The remaining travel and tourism staff may be looking for more flexibility or the option to work from home. This can be an effective solution for retaining employees. For example, a travel agent with specific destination expertise could work from home or be consulted on an needs basis.

In instances where remote work or outsourcing is not viable, there are other solutions that the hospitality industry can explore to improve operational effectiveness as well as employee satisfaction. A more agile staffing model  can better match available labor with peaks and troughs in daily, or even hourly, demand. This could involve combining similar roles or cross-training staff so that they can switch roles. Redesigned roles could potentially improve employee satisfaction by empowering staff to explore new career paths within the hotel’s operations. Combined roles build skills across disciplines—for example, supporting a housekeeper to train and become proficient in other maintenance areas, or a front-desk associate to build managerial skills.

Where management or ownership is shared across properties, roles could be staffed to cover a network of sites, rather than individual hotels. By applying a combination of these approaches, hotels could reduce the number of staff hours needed to keep operations running at the same standard. 16 “ Three innovations to solve hotel staffing shortages ,” McKinsey, April 3, 2023.

Taken together, operational adjustments combined with greater use of technology could provide the tourism industry with a way of overcoming staffing challenges and giving customers the seamless digitally enhanced experiences they expect in other aspects of daily life.

In an industry facing a labor shortage, there are opportunities for tech innovations that can help travel and tourism businesses do more with less, while ensuring that remaining staff are engaged and motivated to stay in the industry. For travelers, this could mean fewer friendly faces, but more meaningful experiences and interactions.

Urs Binggeli is a senior expert in McKinsey’s Zurich office, Zi Chen is a capabilities and insights specialist in the Shanghai office, Steffen Köpke is a capabilities and insights expert in the Düsseldorf office, and Jackey Yu is a partner in the Hong Kong office.

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Don’t Give Up on Tourism. Just Do It Better.

Paige McClanahan’s book, The New Tourist , argues for recognizing how potent travel’s social force is.

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In 1956, the poet Elizabeth Bishop worried about the imprudence and absurdity of going abroad. “Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?” she writes in her poem “Questions of Travel.” “Is it right to be watching strangers in a play / in this strangest of theatres? / What childishness is it that while there’s a breath of life / in our bodies, we are determined to rush / to see the sun the other way around?”

Decades later, the phrasing of these questions, and the fretful frame of mind behind them, seems to perfectly sum up a new attitude toward international travel: one of moral unease. Every summer, a litany of headlines appears about tourists behaving badly: people carving their names into the Colosseum or posing naked at sacred sites in Bali , for example. Even the ordinary business of tourism leaves much to be desired: The crowds at the Louvre make seeing the Mona Lisa such a brief and unsatisfying experience; foot traffic, noise, and trash slowly degrade sites famous for their natural beauty or historical significance. In the Canary Islands, the Greek island of Paros, and Oaxaca, Mexico, residents of popular destinations have protested against throngs of visitors. For many travelers, it can seem somehow wrong , now, to plunge blithely into another country’s culture and landscapes, subjecting locals to one’s presence for the sake of leisure, while the long-haul flights that make these trips possible emit massive amounts of greenhouse gases. Bishop’s queries are our own: Would we be doing the world a favor if we didn’t sally forth so confidently to other countries and just stayed home?

Amid this quagmire, the journalist Paige McClanahan’s book, The New Tourist , is a levelheaded defense of tourism that proposes a genuinely helpful framework for thinking about our own voyages. We tourists—a label that includes everyone who travels abroad for work or fun—think about the practice’s pleasures all wrong, she says, and discount its potential. Many of us are used to thinking of ourselves as simple hedonists when we go on vacation, or perhaps as economic participants of the tourism industry. But we’ve largely forgotten “about the power we hold as contributors—however unwitting—to a vast and potent social force,” McClanahan writes.

The New Tourist is dedicated to fleshing out this bird’s-eye view of tourism as a formidable phenomenon, one that we participate in every time we leave our home country—and one that we ignore at our peril. Traveling the world was once reserved for the very rich; now, thanks to a series of recent developments—including the deregulation of the airline industry in 1978 and the launch of Travelocity and Expedia in the ’90s—planning a trip to Iceland or even Antarctica is easier than ever. The world saw more than 1 billion international tourist arrivals last year, and tourism contributed nearly 10 percent to global GDP. This monumental traffic now shapes the world for both good and ill, as McClanahan demonstrates. Tourism revitalized the city of Liverpool and employs nearly a quarter of the workforce of the Indian state of Kerala; it’s also turning places such as Barcelona’s city center and Amsterdam’s red-light district into miserable, kitschy tourist traps and pricing out local residents.

Read: A future without long-haul vacations

Tourism also has the capacity to shape how travelers imagine other countries. McClanahan dedicates an entire chapter to soft power—a government’s political ability to influence other states—because, as she points out, our travels change where we’re likely to spend our money and “which places we’re inclined to regard with empathy.” Tourism has elevated Iceland, for instance, from a country that North Americans knew little about to a recognized player on the world stage. And Saudi Arabia plans to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into its tourism industry with a goal of attracting a planned 150 million visitors a year by 2030. For a nation, especially one striving to change its international reputation, the benefits of tourism aren’t merely financial. “The minute you put your feet on the ground,” an expert on “nation branding” tells McClanahan, “your perception starts changing for the better—in ninety percent of cases.”

In fact, McClanahan took a trip to Saudi Arabia as research for this book. “I was scared to go,” she writes, given what she’d read about the country’s treatment of both women and journalists, “more scared than I’ve been ahead of any trip in recent memory.” But she was captivated by her conversations with Fatimah, a tour guide who drives the two of them around in her silver pickup truck. Over the course of the day, they discuss the rights of Saudi women and the assassination of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. “Her answers are thoughtful; many surprise me, and I find myself disagreeing with several outright,” McClanahan writes. When McClanahan returned home and published an interview with Fatimah for The New York Times, however, outraged readers excoriated her. “Just curious—how much did MBS pay you to tourism-wash his country?” one wrote to her in an email, referencing Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. “Or was the payment done strictly in bonesaws?”

McClanahan likens these commenters to acquaintances who tell her they refuse to visit the U.S. because they’re disgusted by some aspect of our country—American stances on abortion, or immigration, or race. Traveling to Saudi Arabia didn’t change her awareness of the country’s repression of speech and criminalization of homosexuality. But it did give her “a glimpse of the breadth and depth of my ignorance of the place,” and a recognition that the country has to be viewed with nuance; in addition to its regressive policies, she writes, the trip made her acknowledge the complexity of a land that millions of people call home.

Read: The fantasy of heritage tourism

McClanahan’s anecdote gestures at what we might gain from tourism—which, she argues, has now become “humanity’s most important means of conversation across cultures.” What physically traveling to another country grants you is a sense of how ordinary things are in most parts of the world. Unless you’re limiting yourself to the most touristy spots, going someplace else plunges you briefly into a daily fabric of existence where you must navigate convenience stores and train schedules and local currency, surrounded by other people just trying to live their lives—a kind of visceral, cheek-by-jowl reminder of our common humanity, distinct from the policies of a group’s current ruling body. Traveling, McClanahan suggests, helps people more keenly discern the difference between a state’s positions and the culture of its people by seeing it with their own eyes. This firsthand exposure is a much better reflection of the truth than flattened, extreme images provided by the internet and the news. That’s a good thing, because by sheer numbers, this kind of cross-cultural contact happens on a much larger scale than any other.

Seeing the wide world more clearly seems beneficial for everyone involved. But measuring these grand ideas about travel against its actual effects can be difficult. How exactly does visiting new places change you? Can a short trip, especially one catered to a foreign visitor, really give a person a realistic view of life in another country? McClanahan doesn’t specify what she and Fatimah disagreed or agreed on, or what aspects of Saudi Arabia she was ignorant of and subsequently learned on her trip. In the Times article, Fatimah’s answers about what it’s like to be a Saudi woman who drives, wearing no head scarf or abaya, are uniformly breezy—“Some people might stare because it’s still kind of a new thing to see, but they respect my choice,” she says—and a reader might wonder if, as an ambassador for a more liberal Saudi Arabia, she’s motivated to respond that way. One could argue that by not pressing further, McClanahan actually avoids Saudi Arabia’s complexity. And this surface-level experience extends to all kinds of trips: When I travel, I’ve found that the notion that I’m doing something good—not just for me, but for the world —can seem impossibly lofty, even self-aggrandizing, amid my stress, exhaustion, and vague shame. How valuable is enlightenment about my own ignorance compared with the concrete harm of emissions and supporting states with unjust laws?

And yet this tension is the crux of the soft-power argument: How people feel about other places matters, because these opinions shape reality. Dismissing these intangible sentiments raises the risk of falling into the old trap of seeing travel through an individual lens rather than a social one. What might happen if millions of humans have their perspectives of other nations subtly changed? Perhaps, McClanahan suggests, we’d gain the ability to exist alongside different worldviews with equanimity, without alarm or intolerance—a necessary skill for democracy and peace, and an outcome worth the downsides of mass tourism.

Read: The last place on Earth any tourist should go

But to encourage this global-citizen frame of mind, governments, businesses, and tourists alike have to change the way the travel industry works. If we are to consider tourism a collective phenomenon, then most of the burden to improve it shouldn’t fall on individuals. “Tourism is an area in which too many governments only get the memo that they should pay attention after too much damage has been done,” McClanahan writes. (Her book is full of examples, like the poignant image of visitors trampling natural grass and moss around a popular canyon in Iceland so badly that the landscape may take 50 to 100 years to recover.) Instead, she argues, lawmakers should enact regulations that help manage the influx, and she lists concrete steps they can take: setting capacity limits, building infrastructure to accommodate traffic, banning short-term rentals that drive up prices across the world, and making sure that most of the money and other benefits flow to local residents.

But the social lens also suggests that there are better and worse ways to be a tourist. Traveling will always be personal, but we can shift our behavior to acknowledge our role in a broader system, and also improve our chances of having a meaningful experience. McClanahan sketches out a spectrum with two contrasting types at the ends, which she politely (and optimistically) dubs the “old” and “new” tourist. The old tourist is essentially the boorish figure from the headlines—solipsistic, oriented toward the self, someone who superimposes their fantasies onto a place and then is outraged when their expectations aren’t met. What sets apart the new tourist is a focus on the place they’re visiting. Don’t make it about you, in short: Make it about where you are .

Traveling well, then, involves basic acts of physical courtesy: Don’t litter, don’t cross barriers intended to protect wildlife, don’t take fragments of beaches or ruins, and generally don’t be a nuisance. But it also involves some amount of research and critical thinking about the destination itself. I’ve taken to using my international trips as crash courses in the history of a particular country, which mostly means reading books and spending large amounts of time at museums and historical sites. But this is just what I happen to enjoy. One could just as profitably try picking up the language, having conversations with residents about their lives (if they seem interested in talking to you, of course), venturing to less well-known destinations, or reading the country’s newspapers and learning what issues people care about. The point is to invest something of oneself, to try to engage with a different place—an effort that strikes me as a more honest accounting of the undeniable costs of going abroad. Even Bishop concludes, in “Questions of Travel,” that the endeavor is ultimately worthwhile. “Surely,” she writes, “it would have been a pity / not to have seen the trees along this road, / really exaggerated in their beauty, / not to have seen them gesturing / like noble pantomimists, robed in pink.”

​When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

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Wave of summer travel expected over July Fourth holiday as hot inflation loosens grip

FILE - Travelers line up for security clearance at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on Friday, June 28, 2024, in Atlanta. Travel activity is expected to heat up to record levels around the Independence Day holiday as consumers take advantage of cooler prices for airfares, gasoline and hotels. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)

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NEW YORK (AP) — Travel activity is expected to heat up to record levels around the Independence Day holiday as consumers take advantage of cooler prices for airfares, gasoline and hotels.

AAA expects a record number of people to hit roads and airports during the week between Saturday June 29 through Sunday, July 7. The motor club forecasts that roughly 70.9 million people are planning to travel, the most since before the pandemic.

The hot travel forecast comes amid broader worries that consumers are becoming more cautious on spending outside of necessities, which is a key factor to a cooling economy. Inflation has eased significantly from its peak in 2022, notably on costs for travel and vacations.

“With summer vacations in full swing and the flexibility of remote work, more Americans are taking extended trips around Independence Day,” said Paula Twidale, Senior Vice President of AAA Travel.

The forecast, along with encouraging financial updates from cruise lines, bodes well for a sector that would typically suffer if consumers start cutting back on discretionary items and services.

Airports are seeing record numbers of travelers this summer. The Transportation Security Administration screened nearly 3 million people at U.S. airports June 23, an all-time high. The agency expects the number of air travelers to surpass 3 million at some point over the July 4 holiday week.

Consumers continue to face pressure from inflation on a wide range of goods, but travel-related items including airline tickets and hotel costs have eased significantly from a year ago. Hotel room prices were 1.2% lower in May compared with a year ago, according to recent government inflation data. Those costs have been trending lower since the beginning of the year.

Gasoline prices, which can have an outsized impact on consumer budgets, have generally eased from a year ago. Regular gasoline prices currently average $3.51 per gallon nationally, down 2 cents from a year ago, according to AAA.

Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, Marriott, and Hilton will likely be the biggest beneficiaries of consumer demand for travel this summer, according to Morgan Stanley. Still, the “rising tide of demand should continue to lift all boats,” the report said.

Cruise lines are also poised to benefit. Carnival recently raised its profit forecast for the year and said bookings for 2024 are the best on record in terms of both price and occupancy. It said total customer deposits reached an all-time high of $8.3 billion during its fiscal second quarter and it expects capacity to grow 4.8% in 2024. Competitor Royal Caribbean has also raised its forecasts for the year.

Traverse City Tourism's comfort room helps provide some peace and quiet

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich., (WPBN/WGTU) -- A lot of people come to northern Michigan to find a little peace and quiet. 

But finding those two things in downtown Traverse City during the National Cherry Festival can be a challenge. 

Traverse City Tourism is looking to change that with a brand-new addition. 

The best part: when the festival ends, the opportunity won't. 

• Also read:  $1M included in 2025 state budget for FishPass Project in Traverse City

"We love to welcome people from all backgrounds, from all locations," said Whitney Waara, the COO of Traverse City Tourism.

Walk into Traverse City Tourism and you've always been able to get advice and a brochure for amazing things to do and experience.

And as of this past weekend, you can also come here and have the opportunity to do and experience very little.

"The comfort room is just a beautiful place," said Visitor Information Specialist Sue Bauer.

"It's got very soft lighting. It's got a nice rug on the floor. We have a sound machine in it, a cozy couch," Bauer said.

This is Traverse City's newest comfort room: a low sensory location for those, young and old alike, who need a respite from all that stimulation the world outside offers.

"The coolest thing was we had, during the air show, there was a mom in her maybe eight or nine year old who came in and the child was obviously having issues because of the noise from the Blue Angel and all of that. So they sat quietly and watched out our window and then one of the flight planes flew overtop, and the child just, it was too much; started crying," Bauer said.

"And so we offered the quiet room they went in shut the door, turned on the sound machine. So the child walked in crying and left smiling," Bauer said.

The new comfort room, which will be available year round, is just the latest transformation underway right now in Traverse City to make our area more accessible and accommodating for everyone.

"We wanted to open that door a little wider and just make sure that all families felt like they could come and experience whatever it is that they're looking for when they get here," Waara said.

To send that message, Traverse City Tourism is working on earning a certification as an autism-friendly travel destination.

"Traverse City will be the first community in Michigan to receive the designation," Waara said.

This room is just a small facet of what's required to be autism friendly.

Around the city, other efforts being made: staff members being trained, and awareness and acceptance being realized. 

While the certification would be a badge of achievement for the city, some say it's just the right thing to do.

"Absolutely, it really is. It's one of those things where it just felt right. We knew that our team wanted to be able to do this. It's like being able to make sure that you have ADA accessible doors. There's a minimum threshold here. And of course we want to go above and beyond and make things even better than what we're required to do in order to get that certification. But it's a really good starting point," Waara said.

Traverse City should learn in the next couple of months if they have earned the autism-friendly travel destination. 

As for the comfort room, it's available now, free to use and will be year-round for anyone needing the opportunity it offers.

Airlines got too confident, and now they are paying the price despite record-breaking travel

• Despite booming travel, airlines are struggling to turn a profit.
• Southwest expects seat-mile revenue will decline up to 4.5%, while American predicts up to 6%.
• Experts blame fewer last-minute business travelers, overcapacity, Boeing delays, and inflated costs.

Making money in the airline industry has never been easy.

It's a capital-heavy business with the constant need to expand and innovate while simultaneously managing ever-changing demand and costs.

Expensive fuel, maintenance, and labor don't help, nor do unpredictable setbacks outside the airline's control, like pandemic travel bans and production slowdowns at planemaker Boeing.

Despite the challenging environment, 2024 is still set to see record-breaking passenger numbers, according to the International Air Transport Association, or IATA ,

With so many people traveling, US airlines were poised for success. Some, like Delta, have found it. But across the industry, many airlines are struggling to turn profits thanks to issues like overcapacity, unrelenting competition, and unexpectedly high costs, according to experts.

Take Southwest, for example, which in June cut its forecasts and now expects revenue per seat mile — a key financial metric for airlines — to fall by up to 4.5% where it had previously expected 1.5% to 3.5%.

Before that, American in May warned it expected the same metric to fall by 5% to 6% compared to last year. Its earlier prediction was 1% to 3%.

Across the board, airlines have trailed the benchmark S&P 500 index with more debt than the average publicly traded company and thinner margins.

Airlines got overambitious with their expansion plans

Travel analyst Henry Harteveldt told Business Insider that thinning margins are, in part, because airlines added too much to the market too fast amid confidence in the soaring demand and now can't sell all of those seats.

Reuters reported American hurt its pricing power after aggressive growth in its domestic market. The airline also missed out on revenue from corporate customers due to a flawed ticket sale strategy it has since admitted was a mistake to adopt.

"We're seeing softness in customer bookings relative to our expectations that we believe is in part due to the changes that we have made to our sales and distribution strategy," American CEO Robert Isom said during a May conference.

Southwest also cited its struggle to predict demand as part of its revenue problem. And, unlike ultra-low-cost carriers , Southwest doesn't charge extra for ancillaries like bags or seats — another missed revenue opportunity.

In fact, activist firm Elliott Investment Management recently pumped nearly $2 billion into Southwest, questioning strategies like its lack of add-on fees and calling for a board shake-up and the firing of Southwest CEO Bob Jordan.

Business travelers are booking fewer last-minute premium-priced tickets

Part of the industry's overcapacity problem is because lucrative business travel still hasn't completely rebounded since the pandemic, Harry Kraemer, former CFO and CEO of healthcare firm Baxter International, told BI.

Corporations aren't spending as much on last-minute business travel since the pandemic made Zoom and Google Meet more convenient.

Related stories

"Half of the market is gone, and it's their highest margin," Kraemer said. "You've got all this excess capacity, and you've bought these planes, so what are you going to do with them."

Further, Harteveldt said companies have become more price-sensitive and are looking for cheaper options, noting ULCCs Frontier and Spirit are even getting business customers.

Over the past 12 months, shares of Spirit and Frontier have declined roughly 79% and 50%, respectively, far underperforming competitors and the market.

In an effort to boost revenue, they've changed their strategies to capitalize on the demand for more premium perks, such as dropping change and cancel fees and creating "business" class-like seats.

Boeing delivery delays have eaten into profits

Harteveldt said Boeing's ongoing delivery delays have cost airlines like American, Southwest, and United millions of dollars. This has forced them to adjust their planned flying, impacting revenue opportunities and flight availability.

He also said the lack of new planes means airlines are flying older ones for a longer time. The costs of maintenance and lesser efficiency can add up, and customers can't get access to the nicer amenities and reliability of newer jets.

Airlines need to expand with new routes and planes, he said — it's the nature of the highly competitive industry.

However, Harteveldt noted these forced network shake-ups, like Southwest's exit from four airports , could be beneficial for better leveraging airline pricing power, as capacity can be brought back in line with demand.

"The airlines should find and serve routes that are the most profitable, and that means they may need to increase capacity in some markets and completely exit others," he said.

Low-cost competitor JetBlue Airways overhauled its network to stay above water after its failed merger with Spirit.

Harteveldt noted that Airbus is also facing production setbacks that are impacting deliveries and worrying investors, though not as dire as Boeing.

Airlines are plagued by high costs in an extremely competitive industry

Nearly everything is more expensive than it was before the pandemic, and airlines are no exception.

"It's the worst possible combination of high fixed costs and inflation on the variable costs," Kraemer said, pointing to costs like planes, labor, and fuel. "There are so many permanent changes like virtual meetings that airlines will need several years to adjust for."

Fuel costs in April were 33% higher than they were during the same time in 2019, according to the most recent report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Meanwhile, US airline pilots have gotten huge pay raises in recent years to help fend off a labor shortage.

For low-cost carriers like Frontier and Spirit, these high costs make it challenging to make money, Kraemer said. Still, they force competitor fares down — creating another profit obstacle for mainline carriers. IATA reported in June that industry ticket prices, including ancillary, are 15% below 2019 levels despite high growth.

Harteveldt said beefing up revenue in any way possible is the best way to counteract the ever-growing costs.

"These days, it's less about having the lowest costs and more about generating the most revenue," he said, suggesting strategies such as charging for more ancillaries, reducing the number of discount tickets sold, or creating more enticing bundle packages.

Watch: Thousands of bags pile up at US airports after flight cancellations

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Riot-stricken New Caledonia is empty of travellers. Businesses hope it can regain its place as a Pacific tourism jewel

Nestled between banana trees and palms on the outskirts of New Caledonia's capital, Anne Fonua's guesthouse and two tour buses sit empty.

Before civil unrest erupted in the French Pacific territory last month, her diary was filled with bookings from cruise ship passengers and other visitors arriving soon in Nouméa.

"Everything was cancelled," Ms Fonua said.

Blessed with pristine beaches, lagoons and coral reefs, New Caledonia was a jewel in Pacific tourism hoping to grow its share of Australian tourists.

Travel to the archipelago came to a startling halt in May, when violent turmoil broke out over French plans to add thousands of voters who have been in the territory for 10 years to electoral rolls.

It's a reform many fear will dilute the Indigenous Kanak vote in future referendums on independence.

Tourism operators wait in limbo — and in hope of a peaceful solution.

"We need to stay positive," said Gateaway Shore Tours guide Alfred Nauka, whose weeks are usually filled showing Australians and other tourists around New Caledonia.

"However, being here and actually seeing and facing and living through all that's going on since May, definitely doesn't help me in keeping a positive mindset."

His business was recovering after COVID border closures, before the deadly unrest began on May 13.

"We have lost the totality of our income since then," Mr Nauka said.

Frederic Ballo of Nouméa Turtle Tour, usually busy with tourists, has seen none for about 50 days.

"We hope and we do everything we can to continue. We're adapting day-by-day," he said.

New Caledonia's business and tourism groups say 41,000 bookings have been cancelled, and the halt has cost several billion francs in turnover.

Pro-independence protesters continue to erect road blockades, and unrest last week spread beyond the capital.

"Obviously we can't transport our clients in such conditions," Mr Nauka said.

He believes it will take years to rebuild New Caledonia, once peace returns.

"I don't see how our business can survive this."

'We need peace'

Four decades of peace opened New Caledonia as a destination for Australians seeking a tropical getaway.

It had been on Andrea Bold's bucket list for 30 years when she booked a family holiday there.

She was planning visits to the Isle of Pines and Nouméa in June, before she saw the territory's civil disorder unfold in the news.

Nine people, including two police officers, were killed as violence erupted over France's attempt to push through the electoral reforms.

More than 3,000 international visitors stranded in the tumult , including Australians, were evacuated from New Caledonia.

"We watched it for about a week, and it was very clear that things weren't going to get better quickly, so we made the decision to cancel the trip," Ms Bold said.

Qantas gave her a credit for the family's cancelled flights between Australia and Nouméa.

She hasn't been able to reach anyone in New Caledonia about refunding her domestic flights.

After waiting several weeks, her travel insurer agreed to pay her claim for money lost on cancelled bookings.

Ms Bold was saddened to see how cancellations had affected tourism businesses.

"They've lost their livelihoods in the space of a couple of weeks," she said.

New Caledonia will stay firmly on her bucket list, but she expects a long wait.

"I can't imagine when we would go. And from what I've heard, there's a lot of rebuilding to happen in Nouméa. There's a lot of burnt buildings."

Before the turmoil, New Caledonia's tourism was recovering from COVID border closures, receiving more than 125,000 international tourists and 340,000 cruise ship passengers in 2023.

Most of its recovery was driven by increases in Australian, New Zealand and French tourists compared to 2019.

But there was room to grow, and tourism was viewed as an important industry as New Caledonia looked to develop its economy outside nickel mining.

The territory drew 24,000 Australian tourists last year, half the number compared to neighbouring Vanuatu (51,000), and a fraction of the number visiting Fiji (390,000).

Mimsy Daly, president of business group Mouvement des Entreprises de Nouvelle-Calédonie, said businesses were ready to invest in the industry before recent events crashed the economy.

There were plans to open a new five-star hotel in the Loyalty Islands, east of New Caledonia's main island.

"All of this has been put to an end by the unrest."

P&O Cruises Australia and Carnival Cruise Line have cancelled 10 visits to Nouméa between June and August, re-routing to Vanuatu.

Air New Zealand has paused flights to Nouméa until September, while Qantas and Fiji Airways have not announced when they'll resume services to New Caledonia.

New Caledonia's international airport partially reopened earlier this month, and the territory's international carrier, Air Calin, is operating a limited schedule of flights.

Tourism businesses, industry leaders and the government say New Caledonia is many months away from being able to host tourists.

In a recent survey, about 50 per cent of tourism operators said they believed they could resume business within three months if the unrest subsided.

A fresh surge in violence last week, after French authorities sent seven pro-independence activists to France for detention, may have dashed any hopes of a quicker return for tourism.

"For now, we don't feel safe. Mostly, it's complicated in New Caledonia to go from one place to another," Ms Daly said.

"We need peace. We need a political solution that is long lasting, that can guarantee that peace will be lasting as well."

Surviving, and hoping

In a bid to quell the unrest, France sent 3,000 troops and police to New Caledonia in May. Some hotels in Nouméa were requisitioned to accommodate the forces.

Other businesses are still looking for relief from the halt in tourism, and are concerned for their finances.

Debt repayments for a new bus weigh on Ms Fonua, who hopes her bank can give her some reprieve.

Erin Mattei, who operates La Belle Verte Canopy Tours, a zipline in Nouméa, believes she can continue her business if local people are able to visit.

"We survived the COVID crisis. I am going to do everything I can to keep our business open," she said.

Further north on New Caledonia's main island, Kiara Mediara, who operates Chez Élise guesthouse, is cooking with wood fires due to gas shortages.

"We're keeping our heads up and we're moving forward. I remain positive for the future of Kanaky," she said.

"I hope that things will calm down and that tourism will get back to what it was, because we like to share our knowledge and our culture with everyone."

But Ms Daly said the business community was concerned about the future of tourism operators outside Nouméa.

"We are pretty worried that for a long time, there will be no activity. And we are working closely with the French government to see if we can find ways to [keep] these companies living for the time being."

Tourism is only one of the industries devastated in New Caledonia's turmoil.

Ms Daly said the territory's unemployment was at 20 per cent, up from about 5 per cent before the violence erupted.

"We have lost most of our commercial distribution capacity in the Nouméa area," she said.

"Forty per cent of the food stores have been destroyed. Other commercial areas have been totally destroyed as well, the automobile sector, the industry sector in some areas.

"It's happened all of a sudden. And we need to figure out how we can manage the country now, in this new situation."

The electoral reforms have been suspended because of France's parliamentary elections, which begin today, and many in New Caledonia hope talks about a political solution to the unrest can start soon.

The territory's main tourism body, Nouvelle-Calédonie Tourisme, aims to have international visitors returning in the last quarter of 2024.

When it comes time to rebuild New Caledonia, Ms Daly said tourists will play a major part.

"We will be very happy to welcome tourism again," she said.

Ms Fonua said messages of support from her former customers have lifted her spirits during a dark chapter.

Her message for people overseas is to think positively about New Caledonia.

"Once things open up, I'm sure that a lot of tourists will come back in, because a lot of areas for tourism are not spoiled."

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