TOURISM 2023, THE TRAVEL INDUSTRY´S PLAN FOR COPING WITH THE FUTURE
Date published: 08 October 2008How will the travel industry deal with climate change? How can it ensure that it offers the right holidays to Britain´s ageing population? Will it cope with increasing energy prices and tackle the dramatic increases in the numbers of holidaymakers from China and India?
Tourism 2023, a long range strategy – aims to aid travel companies to futureproof themselves against the toughest challenges over the next 15 years. Tourism 2023 will be officially launched at the Travel Convention in Gran Canaria on Wednesday 8 October and is facilitated by Forum for the Future and supported by HRH the Prince of Wales, ABTA, DEFRA and the biggest names in the UK´s travel industry – including The Travel Foundation, TUI Travel, Thomas Cook, The Co-operative Travel Group, British Airways and Carnival UK.
Tourism 2023 has already held its first workshop with over 40 participants from 38 different organizations from the travel and tourism sector and beyond. The workshop identified a series of high-impact factors that the industry should expect to shape their future over the next 15 years. These were divided into those that they were more certain of, and ones that they were less certain about.
WHAT WE’RE MORE CERTAIN ABOUT
The workshop concluded that the following points are more certain:
1. We know that the impacts and costs of climate change will rise. Drought and water scarcity will increase and become increasingly important – estimates suggest that on average, the world will be 0.4°C warmer by mid-2020s than today. But this average figure masks huge variations: extremes of heat will increase dramatically, making some places “too hot” for comfort. Around 1.8 billion people are expected be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity by 2025.
2. For consumers in the UK, the population will continue to age – we know to a high degree of certainty that over 65s will make up 20 per cent of the UK population in 2023 – from 9.6m today to 13.4m. A growing environmental awareness was considered likely and important and disposable incomes expected to remain tight.
3. Oil prices increases and the cost of energy for the transport sector also rising were both considered quite a certain outcome, and one the industry must prepare for.
4. Global population increases; new, non-Western centres of power emerging onto the world stage; and economic growth in emerging economies are also highly likely to reshape the industry. China's economy is expected to be 50 per cent larger than the US by 2025.
5. Dramatic increases in the number of tourists from emerging economies are likely to result. By 2023, there are expected to be 100 million outbound Chinese tourists, making them the world's most numerous travelers. 50 million Indian travelers will join them.
6. New destinations for travel are also likely to emerge, but over-development and unsustainable volumes of visitors in destinations were also considered highly likely.
7. Destinations are also likely to face additional challenges arising from political instability; regional conflict and terrorism; rises in the price of food; rising cost of energy; and challenges facing local resources for tourism and development.
WHAT WE’RE LESS CERTAIN ABOUT
The workshop also identified a series of factors that were considered important, but much more uncertain (listed below with the most uncertain at the top).
1. Attitudes to mobility – how might people change their travel plans in light of climate change? Workshop participants believe it will be very important, but how consumers will view travel in 2023 was considered the greatest unknown.
2. Perceptions of impacts of climate change. How might people view and be concerned about the impacts of climate change as the real effects are felt? Could they change their travel plans? How much will the government regulate travel?
3. UK Government AND EU legislation or regulation. There are a series of possibilities. Could a new price of carbon or personal carbon allowances reshape travel across the board?
4. The cost of carbon – if a price is set, will it be high or low?
5. Infrastructure for outbound travel – What will the UK’s provision of ports, airports, railways and ships, planes and trains look like in 2023?
6. Competition from international providers – how will the UK travel and tourism industry compete with emerging competition from overseas?
7. New technology for transport – what developments, including new fuels, might we see in use in 2023?
8. Concern about travel impact, environmental and socio-cultural – how might consumers view the impact of their travel?
9. ICT – what new means of booking and experiencing travel might we see by 2023? Could dramatic advances in ICT replace travel, as some suggest teleconferencing shows on a small scale? Or might enhanced virtual experiences motivate people to ‘see the real thing’ more than ever before?
10. How active are older people – will the ageing UK population be cash-rich, living longer and seeking more? Or cash-strapped, highly immobile and wanting to stay near to home?
11. The strength of the UK economy – the workshop considered the future direction of our economy to be relatively uncertain.
12. Destination support for tourism – could destinations ever turn away from supporting tourists if the impacts were considered damaging?
Next Steps
The next workshop on 4 December will develop plausible scenarios on how the industry might look like in 2023. For any further information on Tourism 2023 please contact Vicky Murray at Forum for the Future: t +44 (0)207324 3618, e v.Murray@forumforthefuture.org
For further information
Sean Tipton, Communications Officer, tel: 020 7307 1902/1900Frances Tuke, Public Relations Manager, tel: 020 7307 1903/1900
Casia Zajac, Head of Communications, tel: 020 7307 1987
Notes to editors
Text of the Prince of Wales's message is as follows:
VIDEO MESSAGE RECORDED BY THE PRINCE OF WALES FOR ABTA 2008
"The travel opportunities available in the modern world have utterly transformed how we live. Destinations that would once have taken weeks to reach can now be travelled to in under a day. This greatly increased accessibility has opened vast new opportunities for people to enjoy our world in ways that were unimaginable even a generation ago.
"The expansion of travel has shrunk our world, and in so doing has helped to bring people together, soften divisions and to create understanding where sometimes there was tension. By experiencing other cultures, those of us lucky enough to travel widely have benefitted greatly from what we have seen, heard and experienced. We have also been inspired through travel by the world’s remarkable natural richness and variety.
"Indeed, one of the motivations that increasingly inspires people to travel is to see and experience the wonders of distant natural treasures such as remote deserts, coral reefs and tropical rainforests. Until quite recently, such places were the destination of a few intrepid travellers, while today more and more people find fulfilment in trekking through jungles and diving down to reefs.
"If I may say so, this perhaps brings me to the greatest paradox of modern travel, which is that if we are not very careful it can threaten those wonders of the world that inspired people to travel in the first place. For instance, coral reefs are in decline worldwide partly because of the climate change caused by the combustion of fossil fuels and partly because of the pollution generated from hotels. At the same time, the world’s wetlands, home to countless species of some of the most stunning birds on the planet, have been damaged by demand for water to supply tourist facilities. And waste from hotels and the demand for land to build them have created additional pressures.
"As the number of travellers increases dramatically, and as the environmental impacts for which they are directly and indirectly responsible become more damaging, the efforts which have to be taken by the travel and tourism business to minimize those impacts needs to be on a heroic scale.
"I know that ABTA and many of its members are acutely aware of these problems and, in many cases, are taking steps to do what is possible to safeguard the environment, and I can only applaud the initiatives that you have already launched. ABTA’s “Reduce My Footprint” tool shows the leadership the organization is taking to engage the industry and consumers with issues around climate change. And Tourism 2023 is an example of ABTA and “Forum for the Future” working with the industry to understand how to mitigate its impacts and adapt its business to an uncertain future. ABTA was also instrumental in setting up The Travel Foundation and I have personal experience of the positive work the industry’s charity does around the World. At the same time, the International Hotels Partnership, part of my International Business Leaders Forum, is doing what it can to advise hotels how to operate in the most sustainable way. Through various guides created in cooperation with leading hotels, the Partnership encourages genuine sensitivity to the local landscape and environment, to the local identity, character, culture and traditions; to the visual impact of buildings, to issues of water supply and waste management and to local sourcing of food, materials and manpower. Hotels designed, built and managed in sympathy with local cultural and biological diversity rather than merely following the conventional “homogenized” trend which eliminates all diversity and identity, have the potential to play a vital role in meeting the enormous environmental and social challenges of the twenty-first century through creating far-sighted models for working in harmony with Nature and with cultural traditions at a local level.
"There is, however, so much more that can be done and if we are to continue to enjoy the benefits of travel while at the same time safeguarding natural treasures, we must, I fear, redouble our efforts. One contribution that I hope to make in the coming year is to stimulate new and urgent action to save the world’s remaining tropical rainforests. The ecosystems they support are the most diverse on Earth, harbouring millions of species (which are now under constant threat of extinction) while at the same time supporting the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people. And, crucially, their destruction is also a major cause of climate change, releasing more greenhouse gas emissions than the entire global transport sector. These forests are, in effect, the world’s air-conditioning system which are wrapped like a giant lifebelt around the globe, and yet we are standing by while they are destroyed.
"My aim is nothing less than to build on all the work I have been doing over the past 23 years in the field of corporate social responsibility and to create the largest ever public, private, NGO sector partnership to tackle the challenge to halt rainforest destruction. I am delighted that my Rainforests Project has already found welcome backing from a number of leading companies and from the World Bank, the European Union and the Coalition for Rainforest Nations. It is engaged in very constructive discussions with a number of Governments, including the United States, France, Brazil, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Guyana and many African countries too.
"I can only hope that you will join me in this effort and, as a first step, I hope that I might encourage you to visit my Project’s website on http://www.princesrainforestproject.com/.
"The travel sector, probably better than most industries, understands that there can be no secure long term economic growth if the environment continues to be degraded, and that the only sustainable business strategy is to become a low carbon and resource-efficient business. I hope very much that the travel sector will continue to widen and deepen its engagement on environmental issues and I know that my Business and the Environment Programme would be only too happy to work with you, if this is something you would like to pursue with us and to follow in the footsteps of the insurance, pension and legal sector.
"I will end, if I may, by wishing your Convention every possible success with the particular hope that you will be able to forge the new partnerships and initiatives that will help you to build a truly sustainable travel industry - one that continues to provide social, cultural and economic benefits, but in ways that reflect the wider responsibilities of all companies and institutions in our fast changing world."
