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8 good tourism trends for 2024.

• January 2, 2024
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The future of tourism in 2024

The start of a new year is a great time to look towards the future. What’s happening and what’s changing? What are the most relevant trends and which ones are worth following?

The travel industry is thriving after the pandemic and exciting trends and developments are on the way. In this article you’ll find a selection of 8 trends that we believe are here to stay and are worth tapping into as a travel business.

8 key good tourism trends in 2024

To help you achieve a successful year, we listed 8 key good tourism trends that we find worth following. Be inspired and informed on how to respond and benefit.

In this article

• Cool weather summer vacations
• Increased growth for shoulder seasons
• Low-carbon adventure travel
• Long distance train travel
• Culinary tourism
• Passion focused niche travel
• Responsible revenge travel

Good tourism trends in 2023

Good tourism trends in 2022, trend 1: cool weather summer vacations.

The most popular destinations for the summer holiday were mainly those where the sun was shining brightest. In Europe, travellers would usually travel south to visit Spain, France, Greece and Italy and enjoy the Mediterranean climate. However, with the rising temperatures caused by climate change, we’ve seen extreme hot weather with temperatures rising over 40 degrees (104 °F). Resulting in a boiling hot summer in Europe but also in North America and China.

Travellers now think twice about visiting the same areas and are looking for summer destinations with moderate weather. In Europe, Northern destinations such as Norway, Finland and Iceland are gaining popularity. Also, in other parts of the world travellers are looking for cool weather summer vacations. In the US, they are promoting summer destinations with an average temperature of 80 °F (26 degrees).

How to respond to this trend

If you have the opportunity to expand to more destinations, focus on those that have cooler weather in the summer season and promote the benefits to your customers. This is also your chance to explore new destinations. Make sure to not simply follow the competition but to look closely at what fits your business and ideal customer best.

Travelling in shoulder seasons has many advantages for travellers.

Trend 2: Increased growth for shoulder seasons

Very much linked to the rising temperatures worldwide, there is an increased growth for travelling in the shoulder seasons, off-peak season. Instead of visiting destinations in their high seasons, travellers are looking to travel off-season more and more. Destinations that are usually in high demand in the high season are now gaining momentum for the shoulder seasons. The months before and after the peak.

Travelling in shoulder seasons has many advantages for travellers. Besides avoiding the extreme heat that some destinations experience in high season, they’ll also escape the crowds of tourists flooding every city, beach and landmark. And on top of this, the shoulder seasons are cheaper to travel in.

To follow this development and encourage your travellers to travel in shoulder and low season , you need to start adapting your itineraries. Develop brand new itineraries specifically for these shoulder seasons and excite your travellers for travelling off-season.

Read our article: “How to develop low-season travel experiences”

Trend 3: Low-carbon adventure travel

Now that more travellers opt for cooler summer destinations there is a growing increase in low-carbon adventure travel. These destinations are perfect for spending more time outdoors and enjoying nature . The global adventure tourism market size is projected to reach $2 trillion by 2032 and is expected to continue to grow steadily!

With the increase of awareness of climate change, there is also a growing focus to reduce emissions while travelling. Travellers seek more immersive travel experiences that don’t produce emissions while being outdoors. Low carbon adventure travel experiences are the answer, where travellers engage in outdoor adventure experiences, but without the emissions.

Great examples of low-carbon adventures are:

• Mountain climbing
• Paddleboarding
• Rock climbing
• Scuba diving

Adventure travel experiences have always been popular, and they are in high demand from travellers in varied travel segments. Focus on adding more low-carbon adventure experiences to your itineraries. Thereby, reduce emissions in existing travel products to respond to this trend and also look into develop new low-carbon adventure experiences.

Read our article “Benefits of carbon-free travel experiences”

70% of travellers are craving a sense of calm and relaxation on their trips in 2024.

Trend 4: Calmcation

According to a study by Campspot , 70% of travellers are craving a sense of calm and relaxation on their trips in 2024. Travellers are feeling stressed in the post-pandemic phase and with the unpredictable global economic landscape, people are looking for a way to truly unwind. Calmcations have emerged as the ideal solution, offering a break away from complexities and uncertainties of daily life.

Travellers are looking for experiences closer to home, more affordable and immersed in nature. This means that in 2024, we’re back to nature driven travel but with a comfortable twist. Not only the committed camper is interested, so are many other travellers. They’re looking for beautiful destinations with facilities for a comfortable outdoor experience. Camping trips in nature where they can breath in fresh air, enjoy amazing views, and water-themed.

Travellers are looking for nature driven travel, but with a comfortable twist. Depending on your ideal target group , offer (luxurious) camping adventures combined with low-carbon travel experiences. Besides tents, cabins and ecolodges also fit well into this trend. Focus on developing experiences or complete holidays that allow travellers to take a break from their own life and reconnect and enjoy nature.

Trend 5: Long distance train travel

Rail travel is predicted to be one of the fastest growing travel categories worldwide in 2024. With a new wave of rail lines, itineraries and new train travel booking platforms, there is a growing demand for long distance and luxury train travel. According to the Euromonitor’s travel survey , one third (33%) of travellers prefer alternatives to air travel such as rail for their trips. There is a growing climate consciousness of both travellers as travel businesses, looking to travel more responsibly.

In Europe, new connections are being announced and it’s more attractive than ever to hop on a nightjet train to comfortably explore European cities such as Berlin and Prague or to Alpine ski resorts for a winter holiday. In Asia, the Eastern & Oriental Express is making a comeback in February and let’s not forget about the extensive rail network in Japan, India and Canada. With more and more rail lines (re)opening, train travel is the solution for those that want to traveller slower, travel off the beaten path and reduce their emissions.

Train travel is more popular than ever among travellers so make sure to follow this trend. You can offer train travel as main transport mode to replace flights and reduce emissions or include train travel as a local mode of transport in the destination. You can also offer complete railway itineraries where the experience is the train ride, and not just the mode of transport.

Trend 6: Culinary tourism

For many people, food is one of the main reasons for travelling somewhere. Travellers are eager to explore a destination through its restaurants, farms, traditional ingredients and local dishes. Trends observed for next year are travelling with chefs, unpretentious wine-tasting and dining with locals. Travellers not only want to eat locally during their trip, but they also want to cook and eat with locals.

According to Food & Wine , there is also an increase in Foodie Field trips, where travellers have the opportunity to participate in classes such as bread baking and coffee roasting.

Social media also has a large influence on this trend, especially on younger travellers. Influencers are highlighting certain destinations and restaurants with special food that people will want to taste, sometimes even resulting in the so-called TikTok queues.

As we mentioned, food is one of the main reasons for travelling somewhere. Review your existing (or new) destinations and highlight the food experiences. What’s the destination known culinarily and what’s there to explore? Include local food experiences such as cooking classes and ensure the traveller actively participates in the food scene.

Looking to have your travellers explore the local cuisine? Social enterprise Resirest connects local families and travellers in food experiences. They empower local families long-term, while providing travellers with a unique, cultural and local food experience.

Trend 7: Passion focused niche travel

Culinary tourism is a very specific trend, based on the travellers passion for culinary experiences. In 2024, passion focused niche travel is booming. We’ve already seen that travellers are choosing experiences over specific destinations, and this year they’re more passion-led than ever. Passion focused travel is all about customisiation and personalisation based on your ideal customers.

The better you know your customer, the more insights you have in their passions and travel wishes. The thing with passion focused travel is that it’s very niche specific. It’s about being hyper-focused on what desires travellers have in experiencing and developing new itineraries around it.

Examples of passion focused niche travel:

• Passion for horses: spending a week in the African bush on horse-back
• Passion for dinosaurs: visiting dinosaur museums and learning about their history
• Passion for wine: touring a wine area, tasting and learning about the process
• Passion for birds: visiting designated areas to go bird spotting with experts

To actively follow this trend, you need to have in-depth insights in your ideal customer. Tailoring your travel experiences to their passions or even creating entirely new products for them, requires you to know their passions. Dig deep into your buyer-persona and determine the best combination of passion, destination and experience and turn this into a passion focused niche experience.

Read our article “How to identify your buyer persona”

This year, we’re looking at responsible revenge travel.

Trend 8: Responsible revenge travel

Revenge travel is a trend from last year and it’s the type of travel where people make up for missed adventures due to the pandemic. These trips are often fast-paced, bucket-list-ticking trips and focused on travelling as much as possible. It’s leaving travellers exhausted, they’re not truly connecting to a destination and are not taking sustainability into account that much.

This year, we’re looking at responsible revenge travel. Travellers are still looking to explore the world and make up for the time it was impossible to travel. But they’re doing it more consciously. They’re looking to travel to cool(er) weather destinations, travel in the shoulder seasons, go on low-carbon adventures, spend time outdoors calmcationing, travel by train, enjoy the local cuisine and simply love travel!

Travellers are looking for ‘the experience of a lifetime’ trip and grand adventures, but in a responsible way. Make sure to develop and promote travel itineraries that maximise positive impact and have travellers use their money as a force for good. Lead them off the beaten path, support the locals, celebrate local culture, ensure animal welfare , protect nature and reduce emissions.

Read our practical Good Tourism guide

What does your future look like?

We’re excited for the coming year and looking at the trends, there are great sustainable developments taking place. When responding to the good tourism trends, make sure to always apply the principles of people, planet and profit. Follow trends, improve your travel experiences and grow your business; but focus on creating positive impact.

Don’t forget that trends can also be combined. Think about low-carbon adventures or culinary tourism in shoulder season or calmcations in cool weather destinations. Be creative and use these developments to stand out from the competition, distinguish your travel experiences and be on your way towards travel success. Travel is a force for good, maximise its impact!

2023 was our second year we published an article with trends for the future of tourism. Are you interested to see if our predictions came true? Read our 8 key good tourism trends for 2023 below.

• Good tourism
• Excellent customer experience
• Strong online visibility
• Outdoor nature experiences
• Travelling off-season
• Remote working
• Local travel market
• Spontaneous travel

Trend 1: Good tourism

Travellers are looking for experiences that benefit the destination they’re travelling to. Good tourism is the concept of creating positive impact on people and planet, while offering great travel experiences.

This has always been a movement, but travel behaviour has shown it’s becoming more important. Travellers are looking to:

• Reduce their negative environmental impact
• Support local economies
• Support local cultures and communities
• Visit lesser-known destinations
• Contribute to nature and wildlife protection
• Reduce their carbon footprint

“90% of consumers look for sustainable options when travelling” – Expedia Group

Trend 2: Excellent customer experience

Travellers expect a personal and efficient customer experience (CX) at all times. They judge every interaction they have with your business and each of these interactions are evaluated. From the first up until the last contact moment, businesses and employees need to be on their best behaviour. Both offline and online.

The expectations of excellent customer experiences (CX) are changing , and loyalty and speed are more important than ever. So, it’s key you know what you stand for, and who you want to attract and to offer fast and personalised services.

“Being able to serve relevant information at the right moment in the customer journey often determines success” – Evolv Al

Trend 3: Strong online visibility

Travellers spend a significant time online searching for travel inspiration and tips. They’re absolutely doing so again in 2023. The importance of being visible online is still growing every year. We’re expecting for video to take over even more (look at the rise of TikTok).

With these travellers going online to find their next dream destination you need to be prepared. Make sure to have a fast and user-friendly website , your Google Business profile up to date, focus on content marketing , be active on social media channels where your target group is active and don’t underestimate influencer marketing .

Trend 4: Outdoor nature experiences

Travellers are looking to experience and explore the outdoors more often. The pandemic has made a lot of people realise how much they love the outdoors and how much they appreciate it. Travellers want to go out, breathe in fresh air and go back to basic . Think about multi-day trekking or camping trips.

Important to remember when looking at this growth in outdoor nature experiences, is to always develop travel experiences that are good for the planet too. Therefore, focus on carbon-free travel experiences where possible to truly connect travellers with nature.

Trend 5: Travelling off-season

Travellers are looking to avoid crowds and overtourism and go for a different experience instead. Travelling off-season is cheaper due to less demand, there are less people around so no crowds, and travellers are able to experience a completely different side and feeling of the destination.

Trend 6: Remote working

Travellers realised they can make the world their office and work remotely. The ‘work from anywhere’ trend has changed the tourism industry. The number of remote workers is growing rapidly and opening a new market for long-stays. Remote workers are usually very flexible, travelling to new destinations to work while exploring new surroundings.

The interesting factor here is that remote workers don’t need 24/7 entertainment while travelling. They’re working after all. What they are looking for, is a structure or plan of how to travel, where to stay and where to (co-)work.

Trend 7: Local travel market

Travellers have the desire to stay closer to home for ease, comfort, and local connection. Again, pandemic times have shown them there is a lot to explore close to home. They’ll be exploring lesser-known cities, going to the highlights they ignored before or rewinding in their own unexplored nature.

Be aware that people staying in their own country are looking for different experiences. This means they won’t be triggered by the same marketing messages you’re sharing to attract inbound travellers. Adapt your marketing efforts to their needs to ensure interest and bookings from locals.

Trend 8: Spontaneous travel

Travellers want to turn their ideas into travel plans quickly, easily, and last-minute. Planning proved to be difficult and unpredictable during pandemic times. People got used to not making plans at all or making them very last-minute.

They’ll most likely continue this behaviour and decide when and where to travel only shortly before departure. As a tour operator, you can expect more last-minute bookings and also less time between travel request and booking.

2022 was the first year we published an article with trends for the future of tourism. Are you interested to see if our predictions came true? Read our 6 key good tourism trends for 2022 below.

• Online preparation
• Loyal customers
• Philantourism
• Minimum carbon footprint
• Continued care for health and safety
• Experience of a lifetime

Trend 1: Online preparation

According to Google research, travellers who took a large trip in 2021 spent over 70% of their time researching their trip online. It’s expected this will grow in 2022 as well. When travellers are spending this much time online, they’re searching for inspiration, tips, and companies to book their trips with.

How to respond

You can respond this trend by being visible online. Invest time in your online marketing strategy. Make sure your website is found by those researching their next trip. You can achieve this through content marketing. This strategy helps you give potential customers what they are looking for, while they are actively searching for it. This means creating content, such as blogs, photos and videos about your business and everything you offer.

Also make sure to be active on social media for online brand visibility but also to convert followers to clients .

Trend 2: Loyal customers

It’s predicted that in the coming years, travellers will look to remain loyal to brands and businesses that align with their values. Brands that care for the planet and who contribute to a better world. If travellers found a brand they love, they’ll choose to come back again instead of searching for something else.

Earning customer loyalty is not something you can do overnight. Key is to make sure to know and communicate your own value. How can travellers align if you are not certain about yours? Also focus on increasing your customer value. There are no real shortcuts or easy ways to stimulate loyalty. You have to work hard and earn it, as creating loyal customers requires care and devotion.

Lastly, also (re)connect with your customers via email marketing to keep on top of their mind. You’ll benefit from this as soon as they’ll start travelling again.

Trend 3. Philantourism

Philantourism is a trend that originated in COVID-19 times and is a natural evolution of volunteer tourism. It’s tourism where travellers choose off the beaten track destinations to spend their free time and their money. Specifically in those destinations that need it the most. They don’t commit to projects locally, but simply spend their money to benefit the local economy .

Both you as a tour operator and your customers are important for this trend. For tour operators, it’s important to offer trips and travel experiences to lesser-known destinations and create itineraries that support the local economy. You can also increase your impact by developing community-based tourism .

For travellers, it’s important they know where to go and how they can best support the local economy. Do this by adding tips for local restaurants and shops to your itineraries and traveller communication . This stimulates travellers to go out and spend locally!

Trend 4. Minimum carbon footprint

This is already a very familiar trend to most tour operators, but now it’s also a growing factor for travellers. According to research by Ipsos, 50% of travellers claim that carbon emissions and offset options are worth considering when booking a new trip.

First, it’s important to take the goal of a low(er) carbon footprint seriously. Sign the Glasgow declaration and start reducing your emissions. In your office but also in the trips and experiences you develop. Offer destinations closer to home and include train travel. Also focus on slow travel and add carbon-free travel experiences. Hiking, biking, sailing, and kayaking are popular and allow travellers to experience the destination to the fullest.

Thereby, also provide your customers with the option to compensate their trip. Be transparent in your calculations and offsetting program or partner.

Trend 5. Continued care for health and safety

Not surprisingly, research continues to show that health and safety measures regarding COVID-19 make travellers feel safer. Travellers search online for the specific regulations and measures companies take to provide a safe experience. They expect their well-being to be top priority throughout their trip.

COVID-19 is here to stay, at least for now. Most importantly is that you take responsibility for the health and safety of your customers. Update your company health and safety protocol where relevant. And clearly communicate the safety regulations to your customers. Be clear and positive about what’s possible in the destinations you offer. But also manage expectations and prepare customers for changes.

Additionally, also make sure to have fair and flexible cancellation policy available. (Potential) customers require transparency and honesty.

Trend 6. Experience of a lifetime

Flowing from two years of COVID-19, lockdowns and travel restrictions all over the world, travellers are looking for “the experience of a lifetime” trips. They realised they don’t want to postpone their bucket list trips and are looking for grand adventures for when they can finally travel again.

Offer travellers the experience of a lifetime by creating new (and longer) itineraries with the highlights of the destination. Create trips that make travellers travel slower and experience the destination to the fullest. Don’t forget that a highlights trip does not necessarily mean including the most famous tourist attractions. Surprise your customers by going off the beaten track and to offer them something special.

For the best tailored experience, make it easy for travellers to add smaller packages to extend their trip. For example, a few days relaxing on the beach or a mountain trekking .

Keep in mind that not all trends (in this article and overall) are fully relevant for every tour operator. Select those trends that support you in your journey towards the future of tourism. Keep close to your mission and USPs and focus on the trends that make you better in business.

Your business development is subject to the (local) circumstances, niche market , target group and your preferences. Be in charge of your own future but remain open for outside inspiration and influences.

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Anne de Jong

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THE FUTURE OF TOURISM IS AT STAKE.

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to place destination needs at the center of tourism’s new future. We invite you to be a part of this movement.

Decades of unfettered growth in travel have put the world’s treasured places at risk – environmentally, culturally, socially, and financially. Now the tourism industry faces a precarious and uncertain future.

Re-centering around a strong set of Guiding Principles is vital for long term deep-rooted growth.

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Tourism in the 2030 Agenda

The year 2015 has been a milestone for global development as governments have adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, along with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The bold agenda sets out a global framework to end extreme poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and fix climate change until 2030. Building on the historic Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the ambitious set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 169 associated targets is people-centred, transformative, universal and integrated.

Harnessing tourism's benefits will be critical to achieving the sustainable development goals and implementing the post-2015 development agenda

Tourism has the potential to contribute, directly or indirectly, to all of the goals. In particular, it has been included as targets in Goals 8, 12 and 14 on inclusive and sustainable economic growth, sustainable consumption and production (SCP) and the sustainable use of oceans and marine resources, respectively.

Sustainable tourism is firmly positioned in the 2030 Agenda. Achieving this agenda, however, requires a clear implementation framework, adequate financing and investment in technology, infrastructure and human resources.

GOAL 1: NO POVERTY

GOAL 2: ZERO HUNGER

GOAL 3: GOOD HEALTH AND WELL-BEING

GOAL 4: QUALITY EDUCATION

GOAL 5: GENDER EQUALITY

GOAL 6: CLEAN WATER AND SANITATION

GOAL 7: AFFORDABLE AND CLEAN ENERGY

GOAL 8: DECENT WORK AND ECONOMIC GROWTH

GOAL 9: INDUSTRY, INNOVATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE

GOAL 10: REDUCED INEQUALITIES

GOAL 11: SUSTAINABLE CITIES AND COMMUNITIES

GOAL 12: RESPONSIBLE CONSUMPTION AND PRODUCTION

GOAL 13: CLIMATE ACTION

GOAL 14: LIFE BELOW WATER

GOAL 15: LIFE ON LAND

GOAL 16: PEACE AND JUSTICE

GOAL 17: PARTNERSHIPS FOR THE GOALS

The Future of Tourism: Can the pandemic change how we visit popular sites for the better? 

Many of us have spent the past months yearning to travel, but we’ve also had time to reflect on our collective travel habits. Businesses won’t be eager to resume flying after successfully shifting meetings online, and that will be a good thing when it comes to carbon emissions. As for leisure travel, increased engagement with our local environs will probably have led many of us to question what tourism is for. If the global tourist economy is going to ratchet back into high gear, how can it be done more sustainably, with greater understanding of cultural diversity, and with fewer negative impacts on sought-after sites? This semester at the Harvard GSD, studios in architecture and urban planning led by Toshiko Mori , Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu , and Daniel D’Oca explored these questions both directly and indirectly. All four professors are wary of tourism even as they acknowledge its seemingly inextricable role in so many aspects of our lives.

I caught up with Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu via videoconference in Shanghai, where they’ve been for most of the pandemic. Neri and Hu are the John C. Portman Design Critics in Architecture and co-founders of Shanghai-based Neri&Hu . Like most of us, their travel has been significantly curtailed these past months, and what tourism they’ve engaged in has been mainly within China. Hu observes that, with few options for traveling abroad, “People are just restless, so they’ve started traveling inland to visit cultural landmarks. I feel like everyone I know in Shanghai has gone this past year to Jingdezhen, the ceramics town.” Neri also notes “a conscious effort to travel within China and understand all the great places in this country.”

Tourism within China has been facilitated by a boom in infrastructure development, much of it built as part of the so-called Belt and Road Initiative that began in 2013. (The “belt” refers to the Silk Road Economic Belt and “road” to the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road—these are the land-based and sea-based parts of the initiative.) Transportation infrastructure of all types has been rapidly modernized. “The extension of major roadways has meant that places that would have taken you days to get there now take hours,” Neri says. “Before the train that takes 40 minutes from Shanghai to Hangzhou, it used to take three-and-a-half hours by car.” This increase in speed has “definitely increased tourism to places that would not have been easily accessible.”

How do you bring about an authentic connection to culture? How do you bring people together rather than isolating everyone? How do you prevent experience from being entirely commercialized?

A particular type of cultural tourism in China has grown dramatically as a result of this intensification of speed and accessibility. Imagine staged scenes of farmers leading cattle across picturesque bridges—with rows of tourists lined up in the right spot to catch the perfect photo. Neri describes how “developers have picked up on the idea that if you add culture to a common itinerary for tourists, it adds value.” This cold economic logic raises questions: “How do you bring about an authentic connection to culture?” Hu asks. “How do you bring people together rather than isolating everyone? How do you prevent experience from being entirely commercialized?”

Neri and Hu’s studio, “ De/constructing Cultural Tourism ,” looks at these questions as the impetus to exploring ways of creating more meaningful engagement with tourist sites. The problem they pose begins with John Ruskin, the 19th-century architecture theorist and philosopher of travel. Neri recites a famous Ruskin quote, which acts as a riddle: “I would rather teach drawing that my pupils may learn to love nature, than teach the looking at nature that they may learn to draw.” Neri explains that, “For Ruskin, drawing is the catalyst to seeing and understanding the things around us. In Ruskin’s argument, when we see something beautiful, our natural tendency is to want to possess it. But if we don’t understand it, the possession is meaningless.” Generating such understanding is difficult, Hu says: “The state of our contemporary reality involves taking out your iPhone to photograph something rather than sitting there and spending the time to sketch out a building. Nobody really writes in journals anymore. They just take films of themselves that go into the cloud, and they never have time to look at them again.”

The studio’s two locations are UNESCO-listed heritage sites, Ping Yao and the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang. The latter is a Buddhist sanctuary first constructed in 366 AD and located at a strategic point along the Silk Road, and the former is an “exceptionally well-preserved example of a traditional Han Chinese city, founded in the 14th century.” [1] These are among the most visited tourist sites in China, and thus are more likely to become checkboxes on itineraries than places for thoughtful engagement.

The studio focuses on a particular building type, the kezhan, or travelers’ rest stop. Neri describes one elaborate architectural form that serves as a precedent: “The typology of the caravanserai from the Middle East actually came to China along the Silk Road and became a different form,” he says. “It’s a city in itself. It’s usually round, very much like the famous Tulou in Fujian province, except much bigger. There are buildings inside—it’s a bazaar—and there’s always a hotel component. It’s a place where people come in and not only are they resting, but they’re also trading. It’s also a place of business, a safe environment.” Taking time is a key aspect of the architecture. “The longer you’re there, the more you come to know the inner circle of who’s actually in charge of the place,” Neri says. “It’s not just about fast transactions. It’s about layering. It’s also about hierarchy and vertical relationships. People sleep above and do their commercial activities on the ground floor.” The external orientation is equally nuanced. “Ultimately, our goal is for you to understand all the things around it,” Hu says. “There’s a lot of architectural strategy that students can use: framing views, staging interactions, opening up the layers of culture.”

Neri and Hu’s studio may ultimately provoke more questions than it answers. “The best part of the studio is that no one is traveling, so everyone is itchy to embark on that first trip after things open up,” Hu says. “The studio is like a rest stop for the students as well.”

Daniel D’Oca’s studio, “ Highways Revisited ,” focuses on a slice of American urban history that at first glance has little to do with tourism. D’Oca is an associate professor in practice of urban planning and co-founder of the New York–based firm Interboro Partners , and I talked to him while he was on the road. His studio zeroes in on the local impacts of America’s interstate highway system, which was expanded dramatically beginning with the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. The changes brought about by the act were enormous, including an explosion of suburban growth, the emptying of downtowns, and the solidification of automobile culture in the American psyche. Many freeways were routed through low-income minority neighborhoods, changing them profoundly, usually in negative ways. Examples are scattered across the country. D’Oca lists a couple his studio has investigated: “In Detroit, a highway was routed through Black Bottom, a Black neighborhood, more or less destroying it,” he says. “We’re also looking at a situation in El Paso where the fight is not whether to remove a highway, but whether or not to expand it beyond its current sixteen lanes.”

Tourism is not the most pressing issue in these neighborhoods, but it is an inextricable component of the urban dynamics the studio is considering. “The communities we’re working on care primarily about housing, stability, and quality of life issues,” D’Oca says, “but I suspect that tourism would be a desirable feature of a lot of these plans, as long as it turns out equitably.” One way tourism might help is by providing a boost to local economies. Take the Greenwood neighborhood in Tulsa. “This was a thriving Black neighborhood—it was called Black Wall Street—and it was the site of a massacre in the 1920s, an unspeakable tragedy. The second tragedy was the highway, which went right through the neighborhood when it was rebuilding itself,” D’Oca says. “You have a lot of efforts now to remember the past as part of revitalizing this community and others like it—both past tragedies and the history of when it was thriving. I suspect they want tourists, and tourists might want to see the history of Black Wall Street.”

There is a serious conflict between what the community needs and the effects of tourism.

Daniel D’Oca

Although tourism can bring a welcome influx of people, it has the potential to overwhelm. This is perhaps nowhere more evident than in New Orleans, where the Claiborne Expressway runs through the Tremé neighborhood. “You can imagine that if the freeway comes down, the neighborhood will be more desirable, and there will be a feeding frenzy with speculators buying up shopfront houses and turning them into Airbnb rentals,” D’Oca says. “Nobody in the community wants that. There is a serious conflict between what the community needs and the effects of tourism.” D’Oca advises that planners should take care when unleashing the force of tourism. “New Orleans is a cautionary tale,” he says. “The city has been eaten alive by Airbnb speculation. Entire neighborhoods have been bought up by speculators who turn houses into short term rentals. In the Tremé, it is the freeway that is keeping property values low. Fighting for the freeway to come down is only half the battle. The real battle is to make sure there’s an equitable plan for when it does come down.”

Another tricky question: What happens when tourists stay? D’Oca has noticed that “something interesting has happened in the pandemic” in the small town in upstate New York where he lives. “Some people have moved here as remote work has become more plausible, and a lot of people are buying up second homes to get out of the city. I guess it’s a form of tourism—these are people who aren’t moving here but all of a sudden have houses here.” This has created cultural conflict. D’Oca continues: “It becomes a different vision of what the place should be, and sometimes it’s a zero-sum game. For example, if this is your second home, you don’t want to see growth; you want it to remain a 19th-century pre-industrial hamlet. But a lot of other people don’t have the luxury for their hometown to be that. They need jobs, they need housing.”

D’Oca describes a scene that has played out in similar small towns across America: “In a neighboring town there was a huge fight over a dollar store,” he says. “It was basically local people against weekenders. Some people thought it was the apocalypse—a dollar store coming to town. People like us need to check our class privilege. It’s about the image of the place: whether it will remain an agrarian landscape with hardly any houses in it, or somewhere more livable for working-class people.”

Among the lessons of D’Oca’s studio is how tourism can shade into gentrification. “The connection to tourism that’s really important is that this is a region with a declining population that is desperate for economic development,” D’Oca says. “And the tourist economy is thriving. The town is twice as busy on the weekends now, and increasingly amenities are geared to tourists—business that are only open Thursday to Sunday, selling $15 deli sandwiches. It comes at the expense of people who don’t see this as a boutique town but just as a regular place.”

The studio project of Toshiko Mori is set in Maine, so it is inevitable that tourism factors in. Mori is the Robert P. Hubbard Professor in the Practice of Architecture at the GSD and principal of Toshiko Mori Architect , and I reached her at her office in New York. Tourism has long been a major part of Maine’s economy, and it was hit hard by pandemic travel restrictions: the number of visitors and total tourist revenue each fell by about one-quarter last year. Mori’s studio, “ Between Wilderness and Civilization ,” is set in the small town of Monson, near the Hundred-Mile Wilderness, which is considered to be the wildest section of the Appalachian Trail and is thus a major hiking destination. But the studio is not about tourism. The brief asks students to “balance progress with respect for its ecology” on an abandoned 72 acres of farmland near town, and Mori is interested in other, deeper ways of thinking about the relationship between a place, local people, and visitors.

The studio brief begins with story: “Over one hundred and fifty years ago, Henry David Thoreau was introduced to this forest by a Penobscot guide and chronicled his journey in his collection of essays The Maine Woods. At the end of his journey when he asked his guide if he was glad to have returned home, the guide replied, ‘It makes no difference where I am.’ To him, he belonged to the land, and the land did not belong to anyone—a fundamental mindset for living in balance with nature.”

Playing out the architectural implications of this mindset is a central goal of the studio. There don’t appear to be easy solutions. Monson has suffered job losses as local industries have shifted in recent decades, and it is not clear that plugging into Maine’s flow of tourists would revitalize the town. Hikers equip elsewhere, and the area is packed with picturesque locales. With support from the Libra Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Portland, Mori has instead set up an experiment in symbiosis with Monson Arts , an artists’ and writers’ residency program. “The foundation bought up housing stock that was in decline, renovated them, and started an artists’ and writers’ residency program—bringing in a total of 90 people in the last couple of years,” Mori says. “They have a restaurant and a general store. The foundation previously bought a building in New Gloucester, Maine, which used to be a horrible institution—they called it an institution for the mentally feeble—that really just placed marginalized people in terrible living conditions. The organization renovated the building and converted its program to an agricultural facility.” The question of the studio: How can one intervene in one of the poorest places in New England to attract young people and propose a new and viable economic base?

Tourism is consumption-based—humans going somewhere to take and take and take. We don’t give back and we don’t even think of the symbiosis that’s necessary to sustain human life in the forest.

Toshiko Mori

Monson Arts does draw tourists of a sort, although they are different from those who come to hike. Instead, Monson is being recognized as “a good laboratory for solving the major problem of how to deal with poverty in rural areas in the United States, and how to save towns from obsolescence,” Mori says. “It’s a kick-starter kind of a program. Because of the artists’ residency, people like museum curators and cultural commissioners have been drawn to see what is going on in Monson. Even in the short time we were involved with Monson, we heard of many different organizations coming to see it as an example, perhaps to consider investing.” For Mori, one idea is to “create a new resource for these visitors.” She notes that “the artists themselves are interested in certain types of tourism. They may want to visit the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture or the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association , the oldest and largest organic farming organization in the country.”

This circulation of people and ideas will hopefully serve the larger goal of connecting people with the Indigenous way of existing on the land. Monson is situated among the lakes and forests alongside the Piscataquis River, which flows into the Penobscot River, along which the present-day Penobscot Nation is located. Before European settlers, the tribe called the vast watershed of the Penobscot River home. “[The Penobscot] have a very different ethos and understanding of engagement with the place where they live,” Mori notes. “Tourism is consumption-based—humans going somewhere to take and take and take. We don’t give back and we don’t even think of the symbiosis that’s necessary to sustain human life in the forest.”

For the studio, Mori invited an ambassador from the Penobscot Nation to speak to the students about their life. “They travel by canoes on the Penobscot River; it’s a survival technique,” she says. “Which season to go to the coast or the river to fish, and when to forage in the forest. In the past they suffered a great deal because they were forbidden to forage in the forest, they were given ration foods, and their lifestyle was completely changed, leading ultimately to a public health crisis.” Fortunately, “They’re slowly gaining back their way of life,” Mori continues. “It depends on respecting land, not exploiting it. They think of the forest and human society in terms of equal coexistence.” This mindset manifests in all sorts of ways, large and small. Some examples came through in a visit to the exhibit of Penobscot birchbark canoes in Harvard’s Peabody Museum around the corner from the GSD. “For the birchbark canoes, there are ways to peel the bark without damaging the trees,” Mori says. “Another idea is that, when harvesting bark, it is better not to harvest from the best trees, but rather from the second best. That way the best trees can continue to sustain younger trees and protect other species. This is a very important piece of Indigenous wisdom.”

When emphasizing the sense of connection with nature, Mori is quick to point out that we should not be misled by simple distinctions between city and wilderness. “I live in New York, and this is our nature,” Mori emphasizes. “This is the place we live. We have to work with an ecosystem of this particular density, with the lives of people collapsed together in this way.” Mori is ultimately pessimistic about the capacity of tourism to allow connections to such wisdom. “In a real analysis, you would see that tourism is a colonial activity,” she says. “We really have to think twice about it. I think climate change is helping people to see this. The pandemic has helped us realize how high the energy consumption of travel is, and how unnecessary it is. Tourism in a city is similar to tourism in nature: people just skim the surface of glamour of a place like New York. But the people who lived through the pandemic in a city really got to understand its true nature and what makes it work. That’s similar in some ways to how Indigenous people live: living with the land, in good times and bad, then not just leaving because it’s not a fun time. Going through different seasons and difficult predicaments and embracing all the circumstances of a place and people—that is very different from the voyeuristic mentality of tourism.”

So, can the mentality of tourism shift? Mori’s conclusion also summarizes the sentiments of her colleagues D’Oca, Neri, and Hu: “Going forward from the pandemic, we have to be very wise and conscientious tourists. To get away from tourism as consumption, we have to be open-minded to learn from other people and their environments.”

[1] “Mogao Caves,” UNESCO [https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/440]. “Ancient City of Ping Yao,” UNESCO [https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/812].

• Sustainability
• De/constructing Cultural Tourism – Ke Zhan (Traveler’s Rest Stop) Case Study
• Highways Revisited
• Between Wilderness and Civilization: Monson, Maine

The future of tourism: travel trends for 2021 and beyond

Every year travel trends come and go, however, 2021 is set to be one of tourism’s most significant years to date. As the world slowly recovers from COVID-19 and borders gradually start to open, we expect travel to look a little different than it did pre-pandemic. 

Although nobody knows exactly what will happen, one thing is clear; we won’t be able to travel as freely  (without consideration for our health) as we used to…at least for the foreseeable future. Your position as a tour operator in this rapidly changing industry is an important one as the tourism industry embarks on this next chapter. Governmental regulations, health awareness and the long-lasting attitude effects of a global pandemic will mean changes for the way your business may operate. However, with this comes an exciting opportunity to adapt and innovate, along with the likelihood of travellers being willing to pay more to reduce their COVID-19 exposure. Continue reading to get a glance at what’s in store for the future of tourism in 2021 and beyond. 

Before COVID-19, exploring a crowded city would have been exciting and invigorating. Wandering through bustling markets, enjoying dinner at a bistro brimming with locals and visiting tourist hotspots were often the hallmarks of a fulfilling holiday. Sadly, what once was the source of endless travel memories are now situations that incite fear and anxiety for many.

In a post-COVID-19 world, travellers will be much more cognisant of the need to travel to destinations that make it easy to maintain social distancing practices. Tour operators will need to get creative by designing itineraries that avoid public forms of transportation and crowded tourist areas, as their customers will expect this more considered approach to travel design. This may take the form of itineraries focussing on more remote locations or even the increased popularity of niches such as birding tours and biking tours, where travellers are less likely to come into contact with others.

It’s clear that travel and tourism need to be sustainable ; for the planet, the community, and the industry in general. Taking the principles of sustainable tourism into consideration, socially distant travel is even more important. While promoting safe health practices is, of course, going to be beneficial for the health of the travellers, it is also for the good of the community. Subsequently, these practices will allow tourism to start operating again safely and sustainably, producing economic benefits for those involved as well.

In a post-COVID-19 world, it will be more important than ever for travellers to stay connected as they travel. Gone are the days where people can easily go ‘off-the-grid” as there is now a critical need to stay informed and up to date with the latest travel guidelines. Tour operators that can provide their travellers with detailed online and offline itineraries will be top of the mind for travellers concerned about staying informed. We’ve all seen how quickly situations can change when it comes to COVID-19 so future travellers will likely want to be assured that their expert tour operator will be available to give trustworthy advice at a moments notice while they are in-country. 

Take a look at how Tourwriter’s itinerary chat can help you stay connected with your travellers. 

Tour operators and travel agents who specialise in creating group tours may want to start thinking about how to pivot their business to operate safely and successfully in this new world. One option could be to pivot completely from group travel to 100% FIT travel. Another may involve continuing to offer group travel but only to those groups who already know and trust each other and regularly interact.

In the future, we may see destination popularity being dictated by how well that country or region has controlled the coronavirus. The precautions that are in place, and how the initial outbreak was handled, will reassure travellers that they will be safe while in a particular country or location. This may also, unfortunately, result in hot-spots that were popular prior to the pandemic, disappear due to the crisis and lack of tourism. As a travel designer it will be important to ensure you have a number of locations tucked up your sleeve that you can offer your clients if and when clusters break out elsewhere. 

Not only will popular destinations change, but this mentality is also likely to impact how people travel to and within a destination. The choice of the airline may no longer be solely price driven, rather decisions will be influenced by hygiene standards; e.g. if masks are compulsory or not, seat occupation spacing etc. Within the country, travellers may be more interested in opting for private transport or upgrading to a business class train carriage so that they can stay safe and avoid crowds. 

Take time to keep up to speed with your transportation suppliers and their changing regulations as there will undoubtedly be related questions from your future customers that you will need to answer with confidence. 

With a considerable amount of uncertainty regarding travel safety and contradictory information rife online, travellers will continue to look towards the experts when it comes to planning their trips. Especially in the near future, travel will become increasingly complex, and travellers may engage with agents and tour operators simply to help them manage the complicated airline arrangements and health regulations they must adhere to. 

Putting work in now to align your travel brand as a trustworthy thought leader will put you in good stead to attract customers when travel begins to resume. 

While it is still uncertain as to when the world will be able to freely travel once more, there will be many people worldwide who are already keen to plan a trip to reunite with family and friends as soon as possible. These people are likely to engage a travel expert to coordinate and manage this process for them, due to the complications associated with international travel currently. This emerging trend will likely require less detailed in-country activities, and more focus on providing carefully researched transportation and accommodation plans to and from the reunion destination. 

Free eBook: A tour operator’s guide to effective marketing without spending a cent

How the tourism industry has bounced back from historically significant events

How does the travel industry actually work?

Who are the key players in the industry, where do they all fit together and how does the industry actually work?! There’s no doubt that the travel industry is a confusing space to wrap your head around so we’ve broken it down for you in this easy new resource.

Travel designers- meet the influencers you should work with.

Understand the role travel influencers play in the industry and why tour operators should be following, interacting and collaborating with them. Explore eight global travel influencers who are inspiring travellers daily.

Tourism news websites you can trust

In the tourism industry it can be hard to differentiate the reliable travel news sources from the not-so-trustworthy ones. In this blog we summarise the top travel news websites that tour operators, travel agencies and DMC’s should pay attention to.

How to set your team up for success when introducing new software

Making changes happen is hard. Especially when it is something that will create a significant impact on the way you work, like new software. We discover what change management is and how it can assist you, your leaders and your team in creating new processes that will make you more successful in the long run. Is it time for a change?

What AI means for travel—now and in the future

“Revenge travel.” It’s what a lot of people are doing these days—hitting the runways in big numbers to make up for travel time lost during the pandemic. On this episode of The McKinsey Podcast , McKinsey partners Alex Cosmas and Vik Krishnan join global editorial director Lucia Rahilly to discuss a new report on travel in the age of AI : what the technology’s promise and pitfalls are and what it may mean for the travel industry overall.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

The McKinsey Podcast is cohosted by Roberta Fusaro and Lucia Rahilly.

The promise of AI

Lucia Rahilly: Much of the research for the report drew from interviews with executives at 17 companies across five types of travel businesses. One of those executives is Luca Zambello, CEO of Jurny—an AI-fueled hospitality platform. He says AI will be the new normal.

Luca Zambello: We’re at the very beginning of the hockey stick. Economically, we are at the start of what is potentially the biggest technology disruption that humanity has ever seen.

Lucia Rahilly: So everyone is talking about the disruptive juggernaut that is AI, and particularly gen AI [generative AI]. At a super-high level, and acknowledging that we’re still in early days, what do we expect this to mean for the travel industry in particular?

Vik Krishnan: The travel industry is unquestionably going to be significantly disrupted by AI. Whether it’s gen AI or other forms of AI that have been around for some time remains to be seen. It’s quite clear that if you work through the customer journey and the process of trying to understand where you want to go, where you want to stay, what are the things you want to see, how you want to plan your day-by-day itinerary, gen AI significantly eases the process of travel discovery.

If you then step into what this means for travel suppliers, which includes airlines and hotels and cruises and car rentals and rideshare providers, the promise of AI is very much to help them deliver on the promises, both explicit and implicit, that they make to their customers.

Gen AI significantly eases the process of travel discovery.

What I mean by that is, very often, the expectations of travel are that your flight is on time, your bags get delivered to you safely, you then get to your hotel, your hotel room is available to check into when you get there, and you have a room that provides exactly what you asked for. That baseline expectation is one that many travel companies have historically struggled to meet.

What AI can do is help airlines ensure that planes are on time. It can help hotels ensure that what they deliver in terms of staffing and the product promise is consistent with what they advertise in their marketing and branding strategies.

Alex Cosmas: Not only is travel and hospitality the world’s largest sector, but it’s actually the most intimate sector. That means the answer for each of us to what a good experience looks like—whether I’m traveling for leisure or for business—is, by definition, fundamentally different. And the promise of AI has been to take the pattern of history, take the pattern of millions, and boil that down to the individual response that is relevant to me as a segment of one.

Nowhere is that promise needed more than in travel, where the experience should be a segment of one. That’s what makes it magical. To be clear, AI is already being applied in the travel sector in spades—specifically, in the operation of schedule assets and the optimized allocation of rooms and crews. That’s been true for decades, and it’s only getting better.

But the customer-facing applications of AI are only now really becoming next-generation. And for the most part, in travel, the best AI applications will largely be opaque to customers, because they’ll still be delivered through the mediums that customers prefer: often through humans, through the front line, through desk agents, through guest agents.

AI is already being applied in the travel sector in spades—specifically, in the operation of schedule assets and the optimized allocation of rooms and crews.

That’s ideally the promise. But the starting point is to say we can’t suddenly expect that customers will prefer to interact through more digital channels than they have in the past. Travel is a very human-centric business. And so the best AI, the best models, will be delivered through traditional channels.

How AI can change travel—for the better

Lucia Rahilly: What kind of value might come from using gen AI in the travel industry?

Alex Cosmas: Our latest estimates suggest that gen AI alone, across sectors, is bound to unlock $2 trillion to $4 trillion of incremental value.

Lucia Rahilly: Wow.

Alex Cosmas: Therefore, not surprisingly, capital is chasing the disruptive sector of AI.

Lucia Rahilly: What are some good examples of products that customers might expect to be using or that might be in the background enhancing customers’ experiences in the future?

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Vik Krishnan: Imagine the last time any of you tried to book a trip. You probably started on a search engine such as Google, or you started at an online travel agent such as Expedia, or you started at an actual supplier website if you had some certainty on what airline you wanted to fly or which hotel you wanted to stay at. You probably started with a little box where you put in your destination, you put in your approximate dates, and then you had the search engine present to you a series of results that may or may not have met your needs.

What we’re imagining in a future with gen AI or AI in general is that you start with something much more free-form and say, for example, “I’m looking to plan a trip with my family to New Orleans for a week in October. Can you help me find a hotel that has a pool for my seven-year-old and is within walking distance of the French Quarter?”

Wouldn’t that experience be much easier in terms of trying to figure out where you want to stay and what you want to do, as opposed to getting a list of a thousand hotels in an order that may or may not meet your specific preferences and what you actually want out of that trip? It is one of the most obvious examples wherein customers can see a real difference in what gen AI can do to help them with the travel discovery process.

Alex Cosmas: The other application of AI that I’m excited about is this: every customer gives tells. They drop digital breadcrumbs of things they like and don’t like when they bounce off of the page of a dot-com when they’re shopping; when they abandon a cart; when they return less frequently to search; when they arrive on a page only to check a single itinerary on a single day, on a single fare, rather than browsing for 20 minutes.

All of these are small tells that we as consumers provide travel brands. And so the ability to record, “I actually know what Alex is keen on in general and frankly less keen on and less likely to convert on,” and turn that into relevant offers is really important.

AI is only part of the answer

Lucia Rahilly: Where are we in terms of companies really embracing the use of this next-gen AI and other related technologies?

Alex Cosmas: We’re pretty far down the path of companies both embracing traditional AI and experimenting with gen AI. Very few of the airlines, hotels, cruise lines, and suppliers that I’ve interacted with are not already embracing deployment and actively experimenting with advanced tech. It’s only going to grow.

But there is risk. More is not always better. Faster is not always better. There’s a bit of, let’s say, a cautionary tale that we’ve learned from other sectors, which is that first off, AI is only part of the answer.

I like to say it doesn’t matter if you got the answer right if you got the delivery wrong.

The digital-delivery mechanism is how I go about delivering the answer: a mobile app, a push notification, an e-commerce experience, a kiosk, digital signage, or data just given to the front line. Those mechanisms are as equally important as or, I’d argue, even more important than the predictive and gen AI models behind them.

Vik Krishnan: To build on Alex’s point about getting the delivery wrong, many of you listening have probably been on an airplane in the last year. How many times have you experienced the outcome of landing, pulling toward the gate, stopping short on the tarmac somewhere, and it turns out the gate’s not available yet. Therefore, you have to wait for the other aircraft to taxi out, so your plane can then pull into the gate.

The reality is that putting together an operational execution plan involves data from so many different sources that aren’t necessarily pulled together in a large model. So it doesn’t necessarily enable or unlock this type of orchestration. And this is where AI can be enormously helpful.

There are companies out there that try to understand turning an aircraft, which is the process of essentially getting it from arrival to departure for the next flight. That involves actions both above the wing—for example, getting passengers off and onto the plane, getting the aircraft catered—and below the wing—for example, getting bags on and off the plane.

It involves refueling aircraft. It involves a number of other maintenance-related and ground-handling-related activities that many consumers don’t see. All of that is an extremely delicately orchestrated ballet that happens at an airport every single day, while involving multiple third parties and several different suppliers. It involves a fuel provider. It involves a ground handler. In some instances, it involves a different gate agent than the airline itself. That orchestration requires data and communication of very, very large volumes of information.

There are companies out there that are now saying, “We can actually identify when, during an aircraft turn, something didn’t happen according to schedule.” In other words, that catering truck didn’t pull in three minutes after arrival as it was expected to, which induced a delay. And that delay then allowed for a replanning of the entire turn process, so as to deliver an on-time departure. AI has an extremely large role to play in helping deliver on that promise in a way that suppliers have historically struggled to.

Don’t be AI stranger

Lucia Rahilly: In order to deliver on that process, understanding the data is critical. Here’s Ella Alkalay Schreiber, the GM of fintech at Hopper.

Ella Alkalay Schreiber: Machine learning is important, gen AI is important, predictive AI is important—but the actual challenge is to understand the data, ask the right questions, read prediction versus actual, and do this in a timely manner. The actual challenge is the human thinking, the common sense.

Lucia Rahilly: “Know your customer” is really a business axiom at this point. What does understanding your customers mean specifically for the travel industry?

Alex Cosmas: It means a few things. AI models learn the same way humans learn. It’s a test-and-learn process. I ask a question. I observe a behavior. That reinforces either my false or positive conception of who you are and what makes you tick. If you can’t measure cause and effect precisely, then avoid running an experiment entirely.

This is what our general advice is to our clients. I’d rather they experiment correctly on something small than swing for the fences and have no idea where the ball lands. That’s particularly true in microexperiments, where I have individual customers, where I provide individual treatments, but I have to be able to measure the response. If you can’t measure it, don’t bother. Focus your energy and resources on a different experiment.

This is what our general advice is to our clients. I’d rather they experiment correctly on something small than swing for the fences and have no idea where the ball lands.

If a brand, for example, doesn’t have the digital tech to be able to send a tailored offer to me as an individual, then you don’t really need to know my personal willingness to pay. In that case, stick to the microsegment or the macrosegment and take action that way. If you can’t send a personalized message without making it feel generic, then don’t.

Vik Krishnan: The experience of hyper-personalization has to feel authentic. So in other words, a flight attendant coming up to you and saying, “Hey, I know you normally like a Diet Coke with a slice of lime. Is that what you’d like this time?” is different from presuming what your preferred drink might be. That might be an example of how AI actually delivers on hyper-personalization, but with a bit of a human touch so it doesn’t appear creepy.

Lucia Rahilly: Both of you are deep in this industry. Any examples that come to mind of companies that are really doing AI right? And if so, how?

Vik Krishnan: Hotels that actually understand or acknowledge your past history of staying at that specific property—that’s quite a personal touch I really appreciate. But the reality is many hotels struggle to even understand basic facts such as the frequency, duration, and purpose of a recent stay. Many hotels don’t easily make that type of information available to their frontline staff. And so empowering those employees to use that information to deliver a hyper-personalized greeting or experience is a good example of companies using AI well.

Alex Cosmas: If done right, the frontline workforce should look and feel like superheroes powered by AI. There’s a luxury fashion retailer that arms its sales associates with iPads to link shoppers to the styles and the sizes they searched for online. That’s pretty cool. Now, augment that with the propensity models in the background that give the agent a steer to what a customer wants, and suddenly they appear clairvoyant. Think about that application in travel. There are far more interactions on average in a travel journey.

So as consumers, how do we preserve the magic of travel, which is more about heads-up time and being immersed in our surroundings, rather than about heads-down time and researching on a device? It means more agents who surprise and delight; say, “Welcome back”; say, “Happy birthday”; know you arrived earlier than planned; and swap the room preemptively so you could get in and get on your way. And that’s what we call knowing your customers like you know your friends.

I’ll share one example. When I check into a hotel, I really don’t like the kiosk and the app check-in. But I love it for checking out. For other customers, the complete inverse is true. My hotel can know that. It certainly knows how I check in and check out. It should act on that or understand the why, just as you understand your friends. This is the test-and-learn experiment that we talked about earlier and that most suppliers can begin right now.

AI and talent: What’s next?

Lucia Rahilly: Alex, that makes a very nice segue to Christiaan Hen, chief customer officer at Assaia, talking about frontline talent using AI as an assistant.

Christiaan Hen: Sometimes, people say automation might be a risk to people’s jobs, but that’s not the case here, because there are not going to be enough people to do these jobs in the first place. I like to see it as we’re equipping people with the right tools to do their jobs in a better way to accommodate for the additional workload that is coming.

Lucia Rahilly: This clip invokes the palpable fear that AI and automation will eliminate people’s jobs. We hear that time and again. How do you see these advanced technologies changing things for the front line in the travel industry?

Vik Krishnan: I see technology helping frontline employees do a better job more than I see it eliminating those jobs. We don’t necessarily see, for example, AI reducing flight attendant staffing any time soon, because those flight attendants are on the airplane to provide primarily for your safety, followed by the guest experience.

We see AI in many instances allowing those flight attendants to deliver a better customer experience, because they know that passenger in seat number 17C better as a result of the information provided to them. But it’s not replacing their jobs.

In certain pockets of the economy, technology and AI will end up replacing people. The reality in travel, though, is that the quality of the guest or passenger experience for so many people is tied to human interaction. Consequently, we don’t necessarily see a large-scale replacement of people here by technology and AI.

Alex Cosmas: Let’s look at the facts for a moment. Post-COVID-19, the travel sector employs 12 percent fewer staff than pre-COVID-19. And that’s not necessarily by choice. It is hard to find folks with the hospitality gene who genuinely want to deliver for guests, engage with them, and serve at the highest level day in and day out.

That’s part of the reason we see a smaller workforce in travel today than we have in the past. It takes twice as long, an average of five to six weeks, to fill roles as it did before the pandemic. Those with that hospitality gene would love nothing more than spending less time fixing broken itineraries, fixing issues that frankly could be automated. They’d rather spend their energy serving, which is what travel and hospitality is all about.

It should be a net-positive growth. The travel sector itself should grow as a result, creating jobs. We estimate the travel sector to grow at roughly 6 percent over the next decade, which is twice the rate of the overall economy.

Lucia Rahilly: Could AI and related technologies help with training folks who don’t come by that gene naturally but could be trained to fill those roles more efficiently?

Alex Cosmas: Absolutely. We’re already seeing applications of virtual reality, augmented reality, and AI coming together to offer more efficient ways to enhance and accelerate employee training, because you can throw live, immersive scenarios in front of employees at a higher clip than they would get organically on the job.

Oftentimes, the same is true not just of the front line but also of training corporate and call center employees. AI can learn from the patterns of thousands upon thousands of call-ins and transcripts—which no single human can ever be expected to go through—boil them down to the top ten core issues and suggest outcomes that seem to resolve 70 percent of situations. That’s the power of AI in training.

Lucia Rahilly: Alex, you mentioned virtual reality. Would travel drop if you could experience Bhutan from your sofa rather than actually having to take an arduous flight?

Alex Cosmas: Here’s my honest read on it. We’ve been able to visit Bhutan virtually for over a decade through YouTube and through National Geographic . And yet, travel is at an all-time high. And it’s because we all, as social animals, continue to enjoy experiencing new things, meeting new people, hearing new stories, and being inspired by a new site’s history and cuisine.

The numbers also suggest that we are in an unprecedented growth phase for travel. We are also in a phase where, over the past 15 years, customer satisfaction has steadily grown, despite how much we all like to beat up on our travel suppliers.

Consumers are admitting that the area they want to splurge on in the next year is travel and hospitality, such as experiences and restaurants. So they’re giving us that gift of their wallets and their trust. We have to deliver on that expectation as a sector. Gen AI, traditional AI, augmented reality, virtual reality, and digital technologies are going to help us deliver on the promise.

Alex Cosmas is a partner in McKinsey’s New York office. Vik Krishnan is a partner in the Bay Area office. Lucia Rahilly is the global editorial director and deputy publisher of McKinsey Global Publishing and is based in the New York office.

Comments and opinions expressed by interviewees are their own and do not represent or reflect the opinions, policies, or positions of McKinsey & Company or have its endorsement.

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By Kevin Tjoe — 16 Nov 2021

COVID-19   future of tourism   tourism

Updated March 2023 – There’s no doubt about it: the past several years have completely transformed the travel and tourism industry across the globe. Tourism operators of every size have adapted amazingly well in the midst of an economic downturn and monumental changes that seemed to happen practically overnight. Fortunately, 2022 saw the tourism and travel industry soar to new heights as travelers eagerly packed two years’ worth of travel into one.

So, what kind of tourism trends are ahead? Can we expect the travel momentum to keep growing in the year ahead? What kind of lessons have we learned from the past several years and will they continue to impact the way we travel? 

To look ahead, we first have to look back at how far we’ve come.

Post-pandemic travel

Travel and tourism had been booming just before the COVID-19 pandemic, but travel restrictions caused a quick shift towards ultra-local tourism experiences. Where travelers could once jet-set across the world instantly, travel options were almost instantly limited to neighborhoods and local areas.

With vaccination rates high and most countries lifting travel restrictions, the world has officially opened back up. And the great news is that there’s a healthy appetite for travel. 

COVID restrictions are slowly becoming a thing of the past

Most countries and regions have had some level of social restrictions in place over the course of the pandemic. It’s realistic to expect that varying levels of restrictions may still be used to manage public health risks. Fortunately, as risks subside through vaccination and rapid testing, these restrictions have become much less limiting for travelers. Almost all countries have lifted travel restrictions, welcoming in international tourists who are excited to finally explore beyond their home town for the first time in two years. 

Hygiene and safety during travel

As the effects of the pandemic continue, hygiene and safety will continue to be important factors. Nobody wants to fall sick during their travels and growing awareness of how easily diseases can be transmitted has left travelers more cautious of hygiene than ever before. Be sure to outline your COVID safety plans and policies clearly on all your booking platforms. This will help to reassure travelers as they plan and prepare to make travel plans.

Sustainable travel is the way forward

68% of modern travel customers agree they’re trying to be more aware and supportive of sustainable travel brands , while close to 70% of travelers say they’re more likely to book travel accommodations if they know the property is environmentally friendly. In a world that is growing increasingly aware of the environmental damage that thoughtless tourism can generate, being an environmentally responsible travel tour operator is a key opportunity to promote green tourism .

Flexibility will make travel accessible to more people

As travelers book their next activity, they’re doing so knowing that these plans could still be interrupted by illness or ever-changing restrictions. Considering this, it’s not surprising that one of the defining tourism trends of the past year has been flexible booking policies. There has been a shift in customer attitudes and many travelers now expect flexible policies around cancelations and postponements. 

Flexibility is key right now for the future of tourism, and flexible booking options are proving popular. For example: 

• Many airlines have cut fees for date and destination changes to encourage bookings. 
• Travel booking apps have seen increased interest in their services that allow people to rebook or cancel free of charge.
• 34% of travelers have had much shorter booking windows since pre-pandemic times, and as much as 80% of bookings have been made within a fortnight of departure.
• Trip.com and Google research shows that for Asian travelers, the most important factors when booking travel are flexible bookings, free cancellation, and insurance coverage.

Travel is all about connection

After two years of not being able to travel freely, many are finally looking to reconnect with the world again.

Reconnecting with family and friends

Many families have been kept apart for two or more years, and reunions are front of mind for many. Time apart has led many people to reassess the important relationships in their lives and make more of an effort to maintain connections. 

Reconnecting with nature

25% of travelers have recently participated in new outdoor activities, indicating that we’re ready to get outside and reconnect with the natural world around us. Tour and activity operators will ideally be thinking about fresh, new ways to help guests experience the great outdoors.

Reconnecting with self

With burn-out at an all-time high thanks to the pandemic, we can expect plenty of travel to be booked as a form of self-care. 79% of travelers agree that travel helps their emotional and mental well-being more than other forms of self-care. Switching off has also become more important, and 73% of travelers say their holidays will be strictly work-free in the future. Tour and activity operators may want to consider innovative ways to meet the demand for transformational travel, wellness experiences , and the rare chance to switch off devices.

Technology is at the forefront of travel trends

It’s safe to say that the future of the tourism industry will continue to be influenced by modern technology. In fact, if you’re not assessing your booking and business technology, you might be falling behind: McKinsey research indicates that the pandemic has led to companies fast-forwarding their adoption of technology by three to four years. 

Personalizing experiences for guests

One of the key benefits of modern technology for businesses is its ability to dramatically improve customer service processes. AI chatbots, for example, are an essential tool for tour and activity businesses looking for a proactive answer to limited staff availability. By providing quick answers to common questions, AI chatbots cater to your global audience with consistently excellent customer service that’s not condensed into working hours.

Big data is similarly empowering businesses to better understand and respond to customers. By using the insights from hospitality business intelligence , tour companies can more accurately analyze trends, anticipate customer demands and optimize their pricing strategies. This enhanced awareness of the customer pipeline and decision-making process can do wonders for improving your business’s marketing.

Streamlining booking, payment, and communications

The days of struggling to decipher your coworker’s messy handwriting on a printed calendar are well and truly gone. But lots of businesses fail to recognize that all of their processes don’t have to exist in isolation online. Instead, there are plenty of channel manager tools available to tour and activity businesses simplify and automate tedious tasks.

An all-in-one booking software , such as Rezdy, can cut down unnecessary admin time and enhance internal communications by acting as an up-to-date hub for bookings, payment, and reporting.

The future of tourism is bright

The really great news is that the future of the travel industry is looking bright as people can’t wait to travel. Ensure that your business is ready to make the most out of the world’s hunger for travel by setting up systems that enable simple online booking. By utilizing an online booking system , you’ll be able to streamline your admin duties and simplify your customer’s booking experience. For instance, Rezdy’s booking software equips your business with advanced features such as real-time availability viewer, automatic communication, and integration to various payment gateways.

Rezdy also offers a distribution solution that connects you to the largest distribution network in the industry with over 25k active resellers and agents. Rezdy Channel Manager is a powerful tool that ensures your pricing remains consistent across all channels, allowing your business to streamline its pricing strategies for travel agencies and other third-party sellers.

Ready to set your business up with the right technology to support effortless online bookings and distribution management solutions? Sign up for a free trial or book a demo today to see how Rezdy’s advanced software can support your business well into the future.

If you enjoyed this article, be sure to subscribe to the Rezdy newsletter , where you’ll receive weekly updates on topics such as marketing tips, business operation advice, and industry updates straight.

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The Future of Tourism

Innovation and Sustainability

• © 2019
• Eduardo Fayos-Solà 0 ,
• Chris Cooper 1

Ulysses Foundation, Madrid, Spain

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School of Events, Tourism and Hospitality Management, Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, UK

• Presents the scientific, technological and cultural drivers for the future of tourism
• Considers alternative roles for tourism in the shaping of intelligent futures
• Analyzes an integrative framework for tourism futures based upon innovation
• Introduces policy and governance proposals for an inclusive and sustainable future of tourism

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Table of contents (18 chapters)

Front matter, introduction: innovation and the future of tourism.

• Eduardo Fayos-Solà, Chris Cooper

Tourism Futures and the Technological Facets of Innovation

Resources: eco-efficiency, sustainability and innovation in tourism.

• Margarita Robaina, Mara Madaleno

The Deepening Effects of the Digital Revolution

• Carlos Romero Dexeus

Tourism and Economics: Technologically Enabled Transactions

• Larry Yu, Philippe Duverger

Tourism and Science: Research, Knowledge Dissemination and Innovation

• Natarajan Ishwaran, Maharaj Vijay Reddy

Case Studies in Technological Innovation

• Chris Cooper, Eduardo Fayos-Solà, Jafar Jafari, Claudia Lisboa, Cipriano Marín, Yolanda Perdomo et al.

Cultural Paradigms and Innovation

Paradoxes of postmodern tourists and innovation in tourism marketing.

• Enrique Bigné, Alain Decrop

The Future of Ethics in Tourism

• David A. Fennell

Cultural Paradigm Inertia and Urban Tourism

• Chiara Ronchini

Urban Tourism and Walkability

• Salvador Anton Clavé

Intelligence and Innovation for City Tourism Sustainability

Case studies in sociocultural innovation.

• Chris Cooper, Francois Bedard, Benoit Duguay, Donald Hawkins, Mohamed Reda Khomsi, Jaume Mata et al.

Tourism Governance Innovation

Measuring tourism: methods, indicators, and needs.

• Rodolfo Baggio

Tourism Destination Re-positioning and Strategies

Coopetition for tourism destination policy and governance: the century of local power.

• Maya Damayanti, Noel Scott, Lisa Ruhanen

Focusing on Knowledge Exchange: The Role of Trust in Tourism Networks

• Conor McTiernan, Rhodri Thomas, Stephanie Jameson
• sustainable tourism development
• innovation in tourism
• tourism policy
• disruptive business model
• digital transformation
• tourism code of ethics
• tourism governance framework

About this book

This book presents the foundations for the future of tourism in a structured and detailed format. The who-is-who of tourism intelligence has collaborated to present a definitive blueprint for tourism reflecting the role of science, market institutions, and governance in its innovation and sustainability. The book adopts a comprehensive approach, exploring recent research and the latest developments in practice to inform the reader about instruments and actions that can shape a successful future for tourism. Broad in scope, the book incorporates the perspectives of leading tourism academics, as well as the views of tourism entrepreneurs, destination managers, government officials, and civil leaders.

“This book does a good job of examining tourism sustainability and innovation within this environment of uncertainty to the extent that this book is, as mentioned above, a ‘must read’ for those interested in tourism futures.” (Michael Conlin, Journal of Tourism Futures, Vol. 5 (3), 2019)

Editors and Affiliations

Eduardo Fayos-Solà

Chris Cooper

About the editors

Bibliographic information.

Book Title : The Future of Tourism

Book Subtitle : Innovation and Sustainability

Editors : Eduardo Fayos-Solà, Chris Cooper

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89941-1

Publisher : Springer Cham

eBook Packages : Business and Management , Business and Management (R0)

Copyright Information : Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2019

Hardcover ISBN : 978-3-319-89940-4 Published: 05 September 2018

Softcover ISBN : 978-3-030-07899-7 Published: 22 December 2018

eBook ISBN : 978-3-319-89941-1 Published: 22 August 2018

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XXI, 337

Number of Illustrations : 31 b/w illustrations

Topics : Tourism Management , e-Business/e-Commerce , Public Policy , Sustainable Development , Business Information Systems , Knowledge Management

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The future of travel and tourism in the world

Innovation will enhance our holiday experience. Going to different places and meeting people increases our vision and outlook. It brings people much closer. The inquisitiveness in humans to search for knowledge will never end.

For the tourism industry, it won't be business-as-usual, and we need to redefine, refocus and change the game plan to move forward. Pandemic is the greatest challenge that the world tourism industry has faced to date.

The United Nations World Tourism Organization predicts a decrease in tourist traffic all over the world. This means that global tourist travel could drop by more than a billion. The tourism industry is among the first affected and the last to recover during this health crisis.

Every year travel industry trends change, we explore new destinations and routes. However, this summer of 2021 is set to be one of tourism's most noteworthy years to date. As we, the world denizen, slowly recuperates from COVID-19. Also, borders slowly but surely start to open; we expect the future of tourism to look a bit different than it did in the pre-pandemic.

The future of tourism is not so clear, and nobody is sure what will happen. We will be more cautious about our health. We won't be able to travel freely as we used to in the foreseeable future. The tourism industry is moving forward, and the role of travel operators has become more responsible than before in the present scenario.

Strict governmental regulations, health awareness, and social interaction during this pandemic will have long-lasting attitude effects. Indeed, all this will bring a change in the way travel operators run their business.

However, all this will create a new exciting opportunity to adapt and innovate. Also, people will be willing to pay more to decrease their exposure to the virus.

As more and more visa applications go online, the eVisa is becoming a more popular option for immigration departments. This online process is making travel easier and safer.

No more crowded tourist areas Before the advent of the virus, people were roaming around in bars, cafes, and on the streets with no fear in their minds. Exploring crowded cities was exciting and invigorating. I was strolling through busy markets, having dinner at a bistro full of locals.  

Going to tourist hotspots was a major event of a holiday. Alas, all this fun and laughter, which was once a source of holiday memories, are over. People have become cautious, and new situations demand social distancing.

The situation is improving, but travelers will be more inclined towards going to places that make it easy to maintain social distance. Tour managers will have to be creative and plan tours that shun public forms of transportation and overcrowded tourist areas. Such programs will be appreciated by all travelers.

Travel operators can arrange remote area tours where people who know each other can form a group or environmental park and biking tour to keep social distance. We should have a sustainable approach toward Tourism. Sustainability will bring back lost jobs. Adopting safe health measures is beneficial for the health of the traveler as well as for the community.

Transportation Five Major Means of Transportation used by tourist ● Road transport ● Train ● Sea Route ● By Air

When tourists arrive in a country, they are unaware of the rules and procedures of that country. They need the help of private transfer companies to help them reach their hotel. Travelers come by different means like air and via train. Private transfer companies must tell the tourist that they are in the right place and should provide all the information they need to know.

The right private transfer company helps the traveler to avoid hassles, no time is wasted, and even save the tourist from getting ripped off. In the future, tourists will be very conscious and diligent about hygiene matters. Private transfer companies must make sure that the vehicle is properly disinfected and all hygiene SOP are strictly followed by the driver.

Everyone has access to Smart mobile technology. Before his arrival, private transfer companies provide all the information regarding the car number, driver's name, and even his photograph to the tourist. This way, the traveler is assured that he/she is in proper hands.

All payment transactions are documented and paid through credit cards. Taxi Faro airport to Tavira , which is a small city on Portugal's Algarve coast. Faro provides airport transfer to hotels, resorts, golf courses, and many other destinations.

Sharing of information Holidaymakers who travel for pleasure need easy and immediate access to information about their whereabouts. It's the responsibility of tour operators to guide them and ensure that they are properly guided. It is very critical that they should be well informed and updated about the latest travel guidelines.

Before traveling, all information about the country of a destination like cultural norms, religion, political setup, weather, what clothes to take, and other relevant info can be uploaded by the travel manager on WhatsApp, which is quick and easy. In a post-COVID-19 scenario, travelers need to stay connected as they travel.

Internet of Things (IoT) One of the most exciting promising travel technology trends is the Internet of Things (IoT). It involves internet-based inter-connectivity between devices. Thus, allowing devices via sensors to send and receive data. Already, IoT devices are playing a vital role within the travel and tourism industry, and their application is going to increase further.

For example, IoT technology devices can be installed in hotel rooms that connect to everything from the lights to TV and air cooling system, allowing all to be controlled from a smartphone. In airports, sensors can be installed on baggage cases that will alert passengers when they arrive on the moving belt.

In the near future, we will see Robots greeting travelers at the airport or in front of the hotel. Chatbots will be used for customer service purposes. Chatbots powered by AI is faster and quicker in solving customer's queries.

Conclusion The travel industry is going through a recession period. With time all apprehension and fears will be solved, and in no time, people will be out traveling to different destinations around the world. Technology will make it easier and comfortable to travel.

Stavros Andriopoulos

• Stavros Andriopoulos https://www.traveldailynews.com/author/stavros-andriopoulos/ Secret havens: Unlocking hidden gems of the luxury world with VIP access
• Stavros Andriopoulos https://www.traveldailynews.com/author/stavros-andriopoulos/ Meet Porto Angeli Beach Resort and Olympic Palace Resort in Rhodes island, Greece
• Stavros Andriopoulos https://www.traveldailynews.com/author/stavros-andriopoulos/ The pros of visiting land-based casinos during your travels
• Stavros Andriopoulos https://www.traveldailynews.com/author/stavros-andriopoulos/ Planning a trip to China with kids

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Venice tests a 5-euro fee for day-trippers as the city grapples with overtourism

The Associated Press

Stewards check tourists' QR code access outside the main train station in Venice, Italy, on Thursday. Luca Bruno/AP hide caption

Stewards check tourists' QR code access outside the main train station in Venice, Italy, on Thursday.

VENICE, Italy — Under the gaze of the world's media, the fragile lagoon city of Venice launched a pilot program Thursday to charge day-trippers a 5-euro (around $5.35) entry fee that authorities hope will discourage visitors from arriving on peak days and make the city more livable for its dwindling residents.

Visitors arriving at Venice's main train station were greeted with large signs listing the 29 dates through July of the plan's test phase that also designated separate entrances for tourists, and residents, students and workers.

Venice will limit tour groups to 25 people and ban loudspeakers to control tourism

"We need to find a new balance between the tourists and residents,'' said Simone Venturini, the city's top tourism official. "We need to safeguard the spaces of the residents, of course, and we need to discourage the arrival of day-trippers on some particular days."

Not all residents, however, are persuaded of the efficacy of the new system in dissuading mass tourism , insisting that only a resurgence in the population will restore balance to a city where narrow alleyways and water buses are often clogged with tourists.

Hundreds of Venetians protested against the program, marching festively though the city's main bus terminal behind banners reading "No to Tickets, Yes to Services and Housing." Protesters scuffled briefly with police with riot gear who blocked them from entering the city, before changing course and entering over another bridge escorted by plainclothes police. The demonstration wrapped up peacefully in a piazza.

Citizens and activists stage a protest against Venice Tax Fee in Venice on Thursday. Luca Bruno/AP hide caption

Citizens and activists stage a protest against Venice Tax Fee in Venice on Thursday.

Tourists arriving at the main station encountered almost as many journalists as stewards on hand to politely guide anyone unaware of the new requirements through the process of downloading the QR code to pay the fee.

Arianna Cecilia, a tourist from Rome visiting Venice for the first time, said she thought it was "strange" to have to pay to enter a city in her native country, and be funneled through separate entrance ways for tourists. She and her boyfriend were staying in nearby Treviso, and so downloaded the QR code as required, but she was still caught off-guard while soaking in her first view ever of Venice's canals by the sight of the entrance signs and her boyfriend telling her to get out the ticket.

On the other side of the entrance ways, workers in yellow vests carried out random checks at the train station. Transgressors faces fines of 50 to 300 euros ($53 to $320), but officials said "common sense" was being applied for the launch.

With Waters Rising And Its Population Falling, What Is Venice's Future?

The requirement applies only for people arriving between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. Outside of those hours, access is free and unchecked.

Venice has long suffered under the pressure of overtourism, and officials hope that the pilot project can help provide more exact figures to better manage the phenomenon.

The city can track the number of hotel visitors, which last year numbered 4.6 million and is down 16% from pre-pandemic highs. But the number of day visitors, which make up the majority of the crowds in Venice, could only be estimated until recently.

Stewards check a tourist's QR code access outside the main train station in Venice. Luca Bruno/AP hide caption

Stewards check a tourist's QR code access outside the main train station in Venice.

A Smart Control Room set up during the pandemic has been tracking arrivals from cellphone data, roughly confirming pre-pandemic estimates of 25 million to 30 million arrivals a year, said Michele Zuin, the city's top economic official. That includes both day-trippers and overnight guests.

But Zuin said the data is incomplete.

"It's clear we will get more reliable data from the contribution" being paid by day-trippers, he said.

Venturini said the city is strained when the number of day-trippers reaches 30,000 to 40,000. On peak days, local police set up one-way traffic for pedestrians to keep the crowds moving.

Residents opposing the day-tripper tax insist that the solution to Venice's woes are to boost the resident population and the services they need, limiting short-term rentals to make available more housing and attract families back from the mainland.

Last year, Venice passed a telling milestone when the number of tourist beds exceeded for the first time the number of official residents, which is now below 50,000 in the historic center with its picturesque canals.

Venice mayor calls out 'imbeciles' surfing Italian city's historic canals

"Putting a ticket to enter a city will not decrease not even by one single unit the number of visitors that are coming,'' said Tommaso Cacciari, an activist who organized a protest Thursday against the measure.

"You pay a ticket to take the metro, to go to a museum, an amusement park. You don't pay a ticket to enter a city. This is the last symbolic step of a project of an idea of this municipal administration to kick residents out of Venice," he said.

Venice officials expected paid day-tripper arrivals Thursday to reach about 10,000. More than 70,000 others had downloaded a QR code denoting an exemption, including to work in Venice or as a resident of the Veneto region. Hotels in Venice, including in mainland districts like Marghera or Mestre, should provide a QR code attesting to their stay, which includes a hotel tax.

Venturini, the tourist official, said that interest in Venice's pilot program has been keen from other places suffering from mass tourism, including other Italian art cities, and municipalities abroad such as Barcelona, Spain, and Amsterdam.

But Marina Rodino, who has lived in Venice for 30 years, doesn't see the fee as the cure-all. Neighboring apartments in her residential building near the famed Rialto Bridge once inhabited by families are now short-term apartment rentals.

The corner butcher shop closed. Yet she noted that the new entrance fee requirement will still allow young people to flood the city in the evening for the traditional aperitivo, which can grow rowdy.

She was passing out mock European Union passports for "Venice, Open City," underlining the irony of the new system, and challenging its legal standing with citations from the Italian Constitution guaranteeing its citizens the right to "move or reside freely in any part of the national territory."

"This is not a natural oasis. This is not a museum. It is not Pompeii. It is a city, where we need to fight so the houses are inhabited by families, and stores reopen. That is what would counter this wild tourism,'' Rodino said.

Fitch Solutions: Morocco’s tourism sector to continue growth in 2024

A new report by Fitch Solutions painted a promising picture for the future of Morocco’s tourism sector, highlighting the sector’s potential for significant expansion into new markets, which is expected to increase inbound tourist arrivals by 2026, aligning perfectly with the government’s tourism development roadmap.

Titled “Morocco Tourism Report,” the report stressed that the country’s tourism sector is expected to continue expanding in 2024, following the full recovery recorded in total tourist arrivals in 2023.

Over the medium term, from 2024 to 2028, Fitch Solutions suggests that “arrivals levels will strengthen, with growth driven by European markets.”

However, short-term risks to Morocco’s tourism prospects may arise from weak economic growth in Europe in 2024 and rising living costs associated with tighter credit conditions, prompting consumers to reduce the number and length of their trips.

Morocco, however, remains an attractive destination for European visitors seeking relatively affordable, high-quality travel experiences and looking to reduce their travel budgets, says the report.

Fitch Solutions anticipates steady growth in tourist arrivals to Morocco from 2024 to 2028, with an expected 6.2% annual increase in 2024, amounting to a record high of 15.4 million visitors.

It is further anticipated that by 2026, tourist arrivals might reach 17 million, slightly below the government’s target of 17.5 million visitors by that year.

The report mentioned that the number of tourists would continue to grow, reaching 17.6 million in 2027 and 18 million in 2028, accounting for an average annual growth rate of 4.4% over the 2024-2028 forecast period.

A new study by BMI Research found that the number of tourists who arrived in Morocco in 2023 surpassed expectations. The study had predicted that 11 million tourists would visit Morocco in 2023, but the actual number was 14.5 million, representing an increase of 112% compared to pre-pandemic levels.

It also noted that the Al-Houaz earthquake on September 8, 2023,  negatively impacted tourism arrivals. However, “despite this event, the Kingdom still recorded a good tourism performance in 2023,” applauded the report.

It also found that European markets, such as Germany, the UK, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands, are Morocco’s main source of tourists, accounting for the largest share of arrivals.

Marrakech and Agadir are particularly popular with European tourists, according to the same source, especially during winter. It further highlighted that Morocco is also a popular destination for tourists from the Middle East, such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, who are looking for luxury and leisure travel experiences.

The report credited “Morocco’s strategic tourism roadmap and sustained growth momentum,” noting that the Kingdom is well-positioned to recover from the pandemic and achieve sustainable growth in the coming years, despite European economic challenges and global constraints.

It highlighted the government’s increased focus on expanding and developing Morocco’s tourism offerings, acknowledging the sector as a vital source of income.

Fitch Solutions recalled that in March 2023, the government launched the 2023-2026 Strategic Tourism Roadmap with a budget of 6.1 billion MAD (about $606 million). The roadmap aims to attract 17.5 million tourists to Morocco by 2026 and reposition tourism as a key sector in the national economy.

In this regard, the government has identified nine sectors, five cross-cutting sectors, and six competitive levers to support the growth of the country’s tourism sector in the coming years.

The post Fitch Solutions: Morocco’s tourism sector to continue growth in 2024 appeared first on HESPRESS English - Morocco News .

The future of ethical elephant tourism in Thailand

Apr 25, 2024 • 5 min read

One resort is using this sustainable approach to securing the future of ethical elephant tourism in Thailand © Anna Haines / Lonely Planet

My most shameful moment as a traveler occurred in Thailand .

On my first backpacking trip at the age of 20, I sought out an elephant sanctuary in the Golden Triangle region of Northern Thailand hoping to see an elephant up close. I assumed “sanctuary” meant it was a refuge for elephants but I knew something was off when we were encouraged to climb atop the elephants that were chained to a post.

Ever since, whenever I see the image of an elephant, I see not Thailand’s national emblem, but a symbol of tourism gone wrong. Is it possible to engage in an ethical way with the gentle giant that has been an icon of Thailand for centuries? Determined to find out, I made my first trip back to Thailand.

Finding a reputable elephant sanctuary

I planned to return to the Golden Triangle but this time I did my research. In my search for camps that are engaged in meaningful elephant rehabilitation,  Anantara Golden Triangle Elephant Camp & Resort repeatedly came up as a reputable sanctuary. When, within 10 minutes of arriving at the resort, I spotted two elephants freely grazing near the Mekong River, I was eager to find out how the 20 elephants that live there are cared for.

Many of the estimated 3800 captive elephants in Thailand are not treated fairly. Despite being a protected animal under Wild Animal Reservation and Protection Act (WARPA) since 1975, many of the elephants living in tourist facilities are suffering. They often develop nervous habits from anxiety, which was something I witnessed firsthand here. The on-site vet, Dr Nissa Mututanont, explained that the repetitive circle-of-eight figure one elephant was making with their head is a self-soothing technique they continue to exhibit after captivity, even once they’re safe.

This lesson is one of many I learned from Dr Mututanont as she guided us through making elephant energy balls (a giant mound of bananas, tamarind and nutritional pellets we mold with our hands), to walking with the elephants, to showering them under the warm sun. I was relieved to find out there will be no elephant riding — this elephant camp cares more about the rehabilitation of elephants than providing Instagrammable moments to guests. The elephant encounters here are less interactional and more educational, a welcome shift in the nature of elephant tourism that meets the growing pressure from the travel industry and animal welfare groups to protect elephants from the harmful practices  — such as caging and beating — traditionally involved in training elephants for tourism. Established in 2003, the Anantara camp works with The Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation (GTAEF) to perform street rescues and provide a comfortable home for elephants, with Dr Mututanont overseeing their nutrition and medical care. To date, the camp has rescued more than 50 elephants, not only providing the gentle giants with a new home, but their mahouts too.

The importance of the elephant–mahout relationship 

Despite the 4000-year-old tradition of handling elephants, the mahout is a dying profession. While unethical elephant camps should undoubtedly be closed, there is little consideration for what happens to the elephants and their mahouts afterward. During the pandemic, when travel to Thailand grinded to a halt, the income to take care of elephants dried up too. “Their caretakers need to find an approximate US$20 per day just to feed their elephant, let alone their own family, and meet all their other needs,” says John Roberts, Anantara’s Group Director of Elephants & Conservation. “Elephants consume between six and ten percent of their body weight daily, and it costs approximately US$18,000 a year to look after a single elephant.” Without the support of tourism dollars, mahouts struggle to take adequate care of their elephants.

The mahouts could easily abandon their elephants but they typically don’t, not only because the elephants are their primary source of income, but because they develop a deep bond with the gentle giants too. I sensed this connection when I saw a mahout hugging their elephant’s trunk in a moment of warm embrace. Learning that 70% of the mahouts here came with their elephant, it becomes apparent this is a lifelong relationship, one that plays a large role in determining the elephant’s wellbeing.

The mahout and elephant have their own dialect of commands which, once the elephant is acquainted with their own mahout, they don’t even need to use. The elephants develop such a close relationship with their mahout, they come to treat them like next of kin by, for example, instinctively providing shade over the mahout when they’re sitting in the sun. Rather than a domineering relationship of ownership, the mahout and elephant are more like family — one needs the other to survive. 

Supporting former mahouts

It’s why Anantara Golden Triangle Elephant Camp & Resort takes providing for their mahouts as seriously as the rehabilitation of their elephants. The mahouts live on-site and receive three meals a day. The GTAEF supports the mahouts’ families too, providing an education to their children in the nearby villages where they live. As a result of offering English instruction, these local schools have gone from last in the province for average English score to the top one hundred. Given that being a mahout is typically an inherited profession, improving the literacy and education levels of the next generation has the potential to safeguard the future of elephant caretaking too.

But it’s not just the mahouts’ children who receive an education, the mahouts do too, learning ethical elephant training techniques. One of the GTAEF’s most successful free courses has been the "Target Training Positive Reinforcement Workshop," in which elephants learn how to present parts of their body (for medical inspections like nail trimming and blood tests) by receiving their favorite treat as positive reinforcement. Now in its twelfth year, the training has been so effective the Foundation has expanded to offer it in the neighboring countries of Laos , Myanmar and Cambodia . “To date we have reached over 400 mahouts,” says Dr Mututanont. “The speed at which the new techniques have been adopted by mahouts is so uplifting to see.” 

After my unethical elephant experience over a decade ago, I was eager to find an elephant sanctuary that lives up to the meaning of the word — a true place of refuge. I wasn’t surprised to find it exists at Anantara Elephant Camp. I was surprised, however, to discover that ethical elephant tourism in Thailand is as much about supporting the people behind the elephants — the mahouts who look after them — as the elephants themselves.

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The future of tourism is sustainable and regenerative

To make tourism sustainable and even regenerative, travellers themselves must undergo a mindset shift — but that's not easy in a cost-of-living squeeze. Image:  Reuters/Jonathan Ernst

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• Japanese domestic tourism is recovering from the shock of the pandemic but international travel is lagging.
• Travellers increasingly demand sustainable and affordable options — but those are hard to come by in a cost-of-living squeeze.
• To make sustainable and regenerative tourism a reality, travellers themselves must undergo a mindset shift.

Since the significant easing of its pandemic border control measures last October, Japan has seen a steady return of foreign tourists.

According to the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO), the number of visitors to Japan in July reached 2.32 million, recovering to about 80% of 2019 levels.

And Japanese people are travelling their own country more, too. According to the travel trend survey by Japan Travel Bureau（JTB), 72.5 million people in Japan traveled within their country during the summer vacation season in July and August — almost returning to pre-pandemic levels. International travel, meanwhile, was low: 1.2 million people , which is 40% of the 2019 figures.

Many people wished to travel abroad but were unable or unwilling to do so cited concerns about safety and health, the lengthy immigration procedures involved in international travel and the unfavourable exchange rates and high costs.

For the outbound recovery to gain momentum, a safe and economically enabling environment is essential.

Have you read?

3 ways hotels and tourists can work together to decarbonize travel, japan airlines' clothing rental service aims for sustainable tourism, overtourism: a challenge to sustainability.

As the influx of tourists revitalizes local economies, a growing concern is emerging: the resurgence of overtourism, where popular destinations are flooded with an excessive number of visitors. In response, Prime Minister Kishida Fumio has announced plans to develop solutions this coming autumn to combat overtourism, addressing its negative impacts on local life, including congestion, traffic jams and litter.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, overtourism had started to plague certain Japanese tourist spots. As Japan's tourism industry and tourist destinations hit hard by the pandemic make strides toward recovery, it essential to view these challenges as opportunities for positive change and transform tourism into something more sustainable.

Hotels across Japan are accelerating their sustainability efforts. One noteworthy example is the Tokyo Station Hotel, located within the Tokyo Station building, which is designated as a National Important Cultural Property, is implementing the " CO₂ Zero STAY " programme to virtually eliminate CO₂ emissions generated during a stay by all rooms booked through the official website.

The World Economic Forum’s Platform for Shaping the Future of Mobility works across four industries: aerospace and drones; automotive and new mobility; aviation travel and tourism; and supply chain and transport. It aims to ensure that the future of mobility is safe, clean, and inclusive.

• Through the Clean Skies for Tomorrow Coalition , more than 100 companies are working together to power global aviation with 10% sustainable aviation fuel by 2030.
• In collaboration with UNICEF, the Forum developed a charter with leading shipping, airlines and logistics to support COVAX in delivering more than 1 billion COVID-19 vaccines to vulnerable communities worldwide.
• The Road Freight Zero Project and P4G-Getting to Zero Coalition have led to outcomes demonstrating the rationale, costs and opportunities for accelerating the transition to zero emission freight.
• The Medicine from the Sky initiative is using drones to deliver vaccines and medicine to remote areas in India, completing over 300 successful trials.
• The Forum’s Target True Zero initiative is working to accelerate the deployment and scaling of zero emission aviation, leveraging electric and hydrogen flight technologies.
• In collaboration with the City of Los Angeles, Federal Aviation Administration, and NASA, the Forum developed the Principles of the Urban Sky to help adopt Urban Air Mobility in cities worldwide.
• The Forum led the development of the Space Sustainability Rating to incentivize and promote a more safe and sustainable approach to space mission management and debris mitigation in orbit.
• The Circular Cars Initiative is informing the automotive circularity policy agenda, following the endorsement from European Commission and Zero Emission Vehicle Transition Council countries, and is now invited to support China’s policy roadmap.
• The Moving India network is working with policymakers to advance electric vehicle manufacturing policies, ignite adoption of zero emission road freight vehicles, and finance the transition.
• The Urban Mobility Scorecards initiative – led by the Forum’s Global New Mobility Coalition – is bringing together mobility operators and cities to benchmark the transition to sustainable urban mobility systems.

Contact us for more information on how to get involved.

This initiative, which uses the carbon offset system, calculates and visualizes the amount of CO₂ emissions generated by guest stays and invests the equivalent amount in emissions reduction activities, thereby reducing the emissions to virtually zero. All costs are covered by the hotel itself, meaning that guests contribute to expanding forest conservation efforts and supporting renewable energy simply by staying at the hotel.

Another player in the sustainable hospitality scene is Mori Trust Hotels & Resorts. They are taking steps to preserve tourism resources by introducing eco-friendly amenities like wooden and bamboo toothbrushes and hairbrushes, as well as razors and shower caps with reduced plastic content. They are also eliminating individual packaging for soaps and amenities while charging for these items. The company is currently reassessing the amenities used in their 18 hotels nationwide, which collectively use around 16 tons of plastic each year, and aims to cut down the plastic used in amenities by over 90% by 2024.

Traveller behaviour and tourism

As hotels and other players in the tourism industry move towards a more sustainable future, it is equally crucial that travellers, who are the main drivers of tourism, follow suit and change their attitudes and behaviours.

According to the Sustainable Travel Report 2023 , which gathered insights from over 33,000 travellers across 35 countries and territories, 76% of global travellers — and 56% of Japanese travellers — express a desire to embrace more sustainable travel over the coming 12 months. On the other hand, 76% of global travellers and 75% of Japanese travellers say that the global energy crisis and rising costs are impacting their spending plans. This has led to travellers being more budget-conscious, with only 43% of global travellers and 22% of Japanese travellers willing to pay extra for certified sustainable travel experiences.

In light of this trend, offering discounts and financial incentives by tourism providers may motivate travellers to opt for sustainable travel options. Furthermore, providing more information and choices can also promote sustainable travel, since almost half of both global and Japanese travellers feel there are not enough sustainable travel options available to them.

Regenerative tourism: the future of tourism

"There's one thing we can do: actively choose sustainable hotels and resorts, and contribute to their economic impact. Guests are the key to creating a sustainable environment," says travel journalist Naoko Terada, highlighting a crucial step that we all must take.

To achieve sustainable tourism that considers environmental, social and economic impacts, it is essential to change the mindset of travellers, who must act responsibly in terms of their impact on local communities and the natural environment. The realization of a future in which regenerative tourism, a further evolution of sustainable tourism, becomes mainstream depends on changing the behaviour of both hosts and travellers.

In the World Economic Forum's Travel & Tourism Development Index 2021: Rebuilding for a Sustainable and Resilient Future , Japan took the top spot in the development index ranking.

Japan, a highly regarded tourist destination, is leading the way in the future of regenerative tourism — where the more tourists visit, the more the place changes for the better — which will have a significant impact on the transformation of the global tourism industry.

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