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Every volcanic ash cloud has a silver lining...
Stephanie Draper, April 19th 2010, Climate change, General, Transport, Travel and tourism
I’ve spent the last two days on a train travelling back from Sweden to London. The volcanic eruption in Iceland left me and my two colleagues stranded on Friday night, and since then we have been making slow, but solid progress home.
This is the sort of crisis that brings Dickens to mind: ‘it was the best of times, it was the worst of times’ (all the more appropriate because of the links being made between the last Icelandic volcano and the French Revolution) .
The worst of times clearly point to struggle to get on trains and ferries, the sleeping in airports and not being at home with our loved ones. The commercial losses also have serious implications. KPMG estimates that it will cost the aviation industry £200m. It’s a disaster for airlines, tour operators and for Iceland too especially if the disruption continues. And then there is the knock-on effect for imports, exports and all that lost business time. Ironically we can’t get to our Indian session on sustainable mobility next week now either!
But the experience has been good too. Not only did we manage to get on the trains we needed, especially a hotly contested Eurostar out of Brussels, we have also seen some stunning parts of Northern Europe that you never see going from airport to airport. I have been on a train that goes on a ferry from Denmark to Germany. We met new friends and the people I talked to were impressed by the calm, ease and workability of the train, so perhaps it is something that they will do again.
It has also brought out our ingenuity and ability to collaborate. People come together in these sorts of crises and they innovate – our colleagues at the workshop used Facebook to hire some students to drive them home. And while the airlines have suffered, a number of other businesses have gained – the ferries, coaches and Eurostar have probably had their best weekend ever. And our iPhones and wireless connections have meant that we were always up on what was happening.
It’s hard to see beyond the frustration and commercial risk what something like this presents. But it also gives us a glimpse of a different sort of world, elements of which are already described in our Tourism 2023 scenarios. A world where we connect more virtually, through tele-presencing and other new conferencing technologies, and are ingenious about how we solve problems. This is the sort of thinking that we need to get to a sustainable future. Could this week’s events be a catalyst for the sort of creative disruption that we need?
In the coming days as we continue to be grounded – people will continue to test out lower carbon travel options like trains and buses. They will use teleconferencing more, and they will innovate to find more new ways of doing things. So after all the pain of adjusting, we could find an opportunity for localism, information and communications technology, and overland travel to take us in positive direction towards that sustainable future.
Flying stops. World does not.
Rupert Fausset, April 19th 2010, General, Transport, Travel and tourism
We will discover this week not how many good reasons there are to fly, but how few, and we should use this lesson to help us fly smarter.
I had the time and space yesterday to ponder what – if anything - volcano ash means for sustainability. A cloudless sky at my home in South London is normally criss-crossed with contrails, any sunbathing subject to the continual roar of jets lumbering directly overhead. I can normally see the oil stains and sometimes watch the wheels coming down as they join the Heathrow final approach.
But yesterday, with UK flying shut down due to the dangers of the volcanic ash from Iceland, there was none of that. Instead the sky was clear, and I found myself picking out all the different bird songs in the gardens around us (and feeling slightly ashamed that I couldn’t identify any of them). So my first reflection was that, for the vast majority of us who are not flying, this is bliss – more please.
But surely the new peace is bought at a price, with thousands stuck on the holidays they jetted off to so heedlessly last week, the airline industry losing millions every day, and food supplies rotting at airports?
Well perhaps: we all know somebody who has been unable to travel. I’m only writing this now as an international meeting has been cancelled, and it is strange how a longed-for holiday can become a burden when it is involuntarily extended (I’m told…). But we should not overestimate the importance of flying. You will notice that life goes on. Business goes on. The supermarket shelves are full. Almost all business can be done by other means if necessary – indeed the crisis management around this event is being conducted by videoconference. Less than 1% of UK food is air freighted, and you will often be able to buy almost identical produce that has been much more efficiently imported using modern refrigerated container ships. There is no disaster, only the inconvenience caused by unexpected change.
This is a good thing. Because whatever the amazing experiences flying can bring us, they come at enormous cost – gulping increasingly expensive fuel, for example, and vast CO2 emissions. These costs are increasing, and will become insupportable, if they aren’t already – who’s up for a banking style bailout of the airlines for example?
I feel for anybody who has just missed out on the chance to visit an amazing, far-off part of the world. But missed business trips will be forgotten, even welcomed, and African farmers will export almost all of their produce by ship, as they always have.
Finally, people will discover new and interesting ways to travel. Three of my Forum for the Future colleagues found themselves ‘stranded’ in Sweden on Friday night. They were all in the office in London on Monday morning, having used their expertise in sustainable travel to get themselves home via train and ferry through Denmark and Brussels – and guaranteeing far better pub tales than you will ever get from an airport check-in.
Erosion: the dilemma of the decade
Anna Simpson, January 15th 2010, Climate change, General, Travel and tourism
It was the sort of mud that seems intent on dragging you down, slurping up your ankles and slipping under your soles. But the view redeemed all seven miles of undignified tumbles and slides as I walked from Lyme Regis to Seaton on the UK’s Jurassic Coast. Sparse vegetation skidded down the exposed bones of the cliffs, irate waves clawing at them like wildcats. I got back to the B&B to find a lively discussion under way about huge boulders tumbling down to the sea on an almost daily basis – while heedless tourists fumble around for fossils below…
Ever since ten-year-old Mary Anning found a complete ichthyosaurus some 200 years ago, Lyme Regis has been a hub for fossil hunters. It’s all thanks to giant mudslides – the largest in Europe – that expose new rocks and leave Jurassic remains scattered across the beaches.
For geologists, this ongoing erosion makes the site a whole lot more interesting – but
rising sea levels and freak storms are changing the shape of coastlines around the world at a violent rate. Defences like jetties and marinas can keep the waves at bay – but they also stop coastal habitats and systems from responding to the changes in their own way. This can detract from the fossil-strewn appeal of beaches: not great for local economies dependent on tourism.
The question is, how to find the right balance between preserving towns like Lyme Regis and its surroundings for visitors – on the one hand – and protecting the natural life and geological interest of the coast, a World Heritage Site, on the other.
It’s a small case in point, but as the climate teeters, knowing when to interfere – and just how far to go – could be the dilemma of the decade.
Mark Ellingham: Air travel must help cut CO2
, October 12th 2009, Futures, Transport, Travel and tourism
Hurrah for Tourism 2023, airing so many issues that have been engaging so many of us involved in the travel industry. Is a travel industry sustainable? Can it in some way clean up its own act, or at least clean up its own CO2 emissions? And if climate is changing apace, what on earth might be in store?
I came into the travel industry in the early 1980s, when I set up Rough Guides. Although back then I must say that I hadn’t thought of travel, at least not its independent wing, as an industry. At Rough Guides we were just writing books to inform people about the countries they visited, while most of the small, independent operators we dealt with were enthusiasts first, business folk second, and often driven by a passion to get involved with destinations and communities where they felt strong bonds.
Nor had I thought very much about the travel industry’s effect on the environment, beyond the sorry over-development of mainstream resorts. For back in the 1980s, there wasn’t much observable effect in many of the countries we covered: even in countries like Peru or India or Morocco, where tourism is today a significant part of the economy. And crucially, there was no popular perception about climate change, or about the role aviation emissions play.
When a year or so ago, I was asked to take part in the discussions out of which Tourism 2023 was shaped, the landscape was altogether different. Although I had by then left Rough Guides, to set up an environment imprint for Profile Books, I had a sense of guilt, almost a feeling of shame, about having been a part of the travel industry for so long. And I think that sense is shared, in rather perplexed fashion, by much of the industry. Certainly among the independent travel sector, the sector I know best, which is populated on the whole by thoughtful souls, who care deeply about the countries where they organise trips and tours. People and companies who for many years have been trying to ensure that their brand of tourism puts something back into local communities, by encouraging genuinely local development, supporting local infrastructure, and often putting money into aid projects in areas they know there will be real benefit.
Which is why I think Tourism 2023 is so important – and why it is so good that it has had partners like ABTA and British Airways involved. We need to make sure that the future of travel becomes positive, delivering benefits to the communities we visit. And, crucially, we need to somehow find a golden bullet to make tourism a “low carbon, low impact industry” as the report sets out as a primary aim. That is a vision we must all advance. And perhaps it is one that tourism actually can deliver, to show other sectors the way forward. Aviation, of course, is the key, as an area that is currently unsustainable in its contribution to carbon emissions, and is potentially disastrous if it grows as governments predict.
We need an industry that sets out its store: to remove every gram of CO2 that we emit. Better than that: why don’t we set out to remove twice as much CO2 as we emit? Turn tourism into an industry leader in removing emissions.
There is enough money in the industry to make this happen, and there is evidence that the technology to do so is emerging. Klaus Lackner, at Columbia University, has developed a working prototype of a carbon scrubber that can remove CO2 from the atmosphere, anywhere in the world. If his technology were to go into production right now, Lackner estimates that it would cost around $200 to remove each ton of CO2. Some travellers would be happy to pay that cost today. But with mass production, Lackner estimates a CO2 removal cost dropping to around $35 a ton. That would add a very manageable extra cost to flights: $50 on a return flight from London to New York, $10 for London to Madrid.
We need to apply the pressure to make that happen – urgently.
Mark Ellingham co-founded Rough Guides and currently runs a green and ethical publishing list for Profile Books. He is a member of the Tourism 2023 Steering Committee.
Travel giants commit to sustainable tourism
Stephanie Draper, October 8th 2009, Futures, Travel and tourism
Today some of Britain’s biggest travel companies made a big commitment - to work together to create a strong and profitable future, which benefits tourism destinations and enhances the environment.
The launch of Tourism 2023 is a proud moment for Forum for the Future - the culmination of 18 months of helping tour operators, airlines, cruise companies and travel agents understand how they can be fit for the future – and a sustainable one at that.
It’s been a fascinating process, taking an idea born in a noodle bar in Soho to a launch to nearly 1000 delegates at this year’s ABTA Travel Convention in Barcelona. Its involved research, workshops, creativity and collaboration. But most importantly it’s been an exercise in recognising that the future is going to be different and that taking a sustainable approach will help industries like tourism prepare for that difference. It has been one of those really inspirational projects for me. We’ve been working with committed partners who are really engaged in understanding and preparing for their future. They have given their collective time, effort and intellect to working through the big issues that will shape their industry.
With the help of more than 100 industry experts, we have worked through those issues to produce a set of four vivid scenarios of plausible but very different futures for the industry and a vision of a sustainable tourism industry in 2023. The scenarios explore key questions, like how climate change and related regulation will affect mainstream tourism; the extent to which technology will deliver solutions; and whether people will change their travelling habits because of rising costs or disappointing holidays to degraded places.
Our partners have now signed up to the Tourism 2023 Vision, committing themselves, individually and as a group, to creating a sustainable industry by 2023.
It states, for example that the UK industry will deliver “measurable socio-economic benefits” to destinations and work with local governments to make sure tourism development is sustainable: “That way, our operations are welcomed by host communities and our business is sustained for the long term.”
It also pledges to use more renewable energy, conserve water, minimise waste and protect vulnerable ecosystems: “It makes commercial sense for us to commit to ambitious efficiency savings, to prepare for environmental shocks and to add to the natural environment that we all depend on, not detract from it.”
It’s not all been plain sailing, but over the years I have learnt that that is the nature of creating change. And there is still a lot to be done – next up is delivering hard performance improvements.
So well done ABTA (Association of British Travel Agents), Advantage Travel Centres, British Airways, Carnival UK, The Co-operative Travel, Sunvil, The Travel Foundation, Thomas Cook and TUI Travel on committing to be sustainable in less than 15 years time – this is really good news for the whole industry. I look forward to more inspiration in the coming months and years, as others join our pioneers and we see a reshaped, sustainable and more prosperous industry emerge.
For further information, to download the report and view the scenarios click here.
Tackling tourism's economic trade-off
Stephanie Draper, April 24th 2009, Travel and tourism
The trade-off between the environment and the economy is one of the big questions of sustainable tourism. How do you balance the negative climate-change effects of flying against the socio-economic benefits of tourism?
Environmentalists say we have to stop flying if we are to avert climate change, while the industry argues communities that rely on tourism will suffer if we stop flying to distant places. Both points are valid, but the debate is increasingly polarised and there is an imbalance of information. We know roughly how much a flight contributes to climate change, but the same cannot be said for economic benefits.
You can calculate the carbon footprint of your holiday on a multitude of websites such as Reduce my Footprint or Climate Care. A flight to Turkey for a family of four would generate about 2.2 tonnes of carbon. That amounts to 95% of the overall carbon impact of an average holiday, or around a quarter of a family of four's annual allowance if they were working to a carbon budget.
The economic benefits are sketchier. Tourism is undoubtedly an economic powerhouse. It accounts for one in 11 jobs worldwide and 10% of global GDP. In some countries, tourism provides large chunks of national income.
But how much of your hard-earned cash do the local communities you visit actually receive? The Ethical Travel Guide produced by Tourism Concern calculated that only £250 of a £1,500 holiday to Kenya reached the country and none of it reached the local Masai population. But for an average holiday, it is difficult to know.
Research by the Overseas Development Institute shows holidaymakers can make an active contribution to poor communities by buying indigenous crafts, using local transport and guides, taking local excursions and eating at restaurants serving locally grown produce.
We need a simple calculation to illustrate how much of the cost of a holiday reaches a local community. When we buy Fairtrade coffee we can see how much of the amount we pay goes to different parts of the supply chain by counting the number of bands on a coffee cup on the packaging. Let's have something like that for holidays.
There are ways and means to do this, but it won't be easy. Ultimately, there could be a label in a brochure that tells a customer the value they are adding by making a booking. That way people can decide whether a holiday offering 25% value to a local community is worth blowing their carbon budget for.
This would stimulate debate and give people a choice. It should also improve the economic benefits for communities that do not get much at present.
But we also need ways to avoid these sorts of trade-offs in the first place, because ultimately nobody wins. Someone on a Pacific island gets a short-term benefit if we keep flying to visit him or her, but their long-term prospects are grave as climate change causes sea levels to rise.
The UN World Tourism Organization recommends visitors should stay longer to enhance the economic benefits of flying. More time allows people to visit more places and spend more money, and it works for climate change, too. If you have the same people in a resort for three weeks, you reduce the number of flights needed to keep a place full, and reduce the climate footprint of the resort.
Six Senses offers discounts for people who stay longer than two weeks in the Maldives. If we all took fewer, longer long-haul holidays it would be better for communities and the environment.
Let's get the economic benefits of tourism firmly on the agenda, find ways to calculate and maximise the benefit of holidays to local communities and look for options that give people the best of all worlds. After all, that's what holidaying is all about.
This article was originally published in Travel Weekly
The planet cannot take more tourists
Stephanie Draper, November 12th 2008, Travel and tourism
First published in Travel Weekly
The credit crunch will probably mean people change their holiday habits in the short term. But the way we travel is also challenged in a more fundamental way.
Once we are out of this financial ditch, the new middle classes around the world are going to get moving. According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization, worldwide tourist numbers are going to double from 800 million this year to 1.6 billion by 2020.
This staggering level of growth is a challenge to sustainable development for the tourism industry. If we reach the UNWTO numbers, there will be much greater demand for a limited resource.
That might be a tropical island, a national monument, a beautiful city or an exhilarating experience.
At the same time, there are plenty of ecological assessments that tell us many of the natural resources on which tourism relies are being depleted.
If you add climate change into the mix, along with the carbon-dioxide emissions and water scarcity, then you have what the Harvard Business Review has called a tourism time bomb.
The truth is, it is not possible to achieve this sort of growth and maintain the quality of the tourism product, not to mention the quality of the planet.
Appropriate pricing and rationing will offer some of the solution – just as only a limited numbers of the rich can go to the Galapagos right now.
But we will also have to look at holidays differently – more sustainably. That might mean holidaying on a three or four-year cycle – going long-haul every third year and more locally at other times.
It will also mean thinking about what we want out of our leisure time – perhaps focusing on the people that we are with more than the places we visit.
Sustainable development is about finding a way through these challenges. If the industry is going to move beyond the credit crunch and through this resource crunch it will need to look at how to profit by doing things differently.
Paradise Found
Vicky Murray, October 4th 2008, Travel and tourism
Was anyone else as shocked as I was to find out that ailing airline Alitalia hadn’t registered a profit since 1999? Yes – 1999! Almost ten years ago! Or how about the speed at which the 3rd largest UK tour operator XL Leisure group went under? Both Alitalia and XL have cited high fuel prices and a sagging economy as the root of their downfall.
There is no doubt that this double whammy has generally taken the tourism industry by surprise – but there are some that have been more prepared than others by taking a more sustainable strategic approach. And as a result, they are in a better position to weather the storm.
Paradise Found, our latest report, is a celebration of this. Focusing on destinations, it demonstrates the imperative for sustainable tourism – for people, planet and profits. The report gives Forum’s take on what a sustainable resort looks like with guidelines on what issues to take into account when developing or refurbishing a destination. The report also includes inspiring case studies showing that it is possible for resorts to become more profitable while benefitting local communities and the environment.
Take Six Senses’ Soneva Fushi resort in the Maldives for example. It is one of a growing number of destinations which are already benefitting from incorporating carbon management into their business. Since starting to manage its energy use in 2006 it has halved its carbon footprint. What’s more it plans to go further by becoming carbon neutral by 2010, offsetting emissions from guest flights, resort travel and operations by building wind turbines in India which are expected to generate more than US$1 million over 20 years. Any surplus will be invested into environmental and social initiatives. This is a leading, sustainable approach to carbon management.
So would Alitalia have survived with a more efficient fleet that reduced its fuel bills? Would XL still be operating if it had managed to come up with innovative, sustainable holiday options for its customers? Who can say? What we do know is that Paradise Found shows that sustainable tourism can be achieved. And another of our projects, Tourism 2023, a multi stakeholder initiative currently underway and due to be released late Spring next year, will help the UK outbound industry and some of its key destinations understand more about their future and be able to plan for it.
In increasingly unpredictable times for the industry, and of course the planet, sustainable tourism has to be the way of the future.
Download Paradise Found here
Tourism 2023 Update
Stephanie Draper, September 2nd 2008, Futures, Travel and tourism
This summer is certainly seeing interesting changes to holiday habits. With high oil prices and the credit crunch at the top of the agenda this summer, the holiday industry is going through a challenging period. Whilst many consumers are choosing to spend money more locally, others have elected to stay put for their vacations. Meanwhile, airlines’ profits have shrunk and some have even gone out of business.
But while the downturn is affecting holidays in the short term, the fundamentals of travel are also being challenged.
Over the next few decades the world’s new middle classes will increasingly travel internationally. According to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation, tourist visits are going to double from 800 million now to 1.6 billion by 2020.
This staggering level of growth exposes the tourism industry to a classic sustainable development challenge - increased demands on a limited resource, in this case holiday experiences, be they exhilarating activities or the destinations themselves. The Harvard Business Review translates this into a ‘scarcity of place’.
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment tells us that many of the natural resources on which tourism relies are being depleted. And if you also factor in climate change, CO2 emissions and related water scarcity then you have a tourism time bomb.
Given these factors, our latest tourism project, Tourism 2023 could not be more timely. The project aims to help the UK outbound industry and some of its key destinations understand more about their future and be able to plan for it.
Here’s a bit more information on why we, and others, think this project is so important and has such potential to create change. Addressing key challenges and creating a more sustainable tourism industry is an exciting prospect - our first workshop was so popular we had to move it to a bigger location!
Why futures thinking is important
We can’t predict the future. The amount of changes that have taken place even over the last few years, let alone the last 15, show us that it would be foolish to even try. But that does not mean we cannot and should not think about how to prepare for and shape our future. Rather that just reacting to events as they occur, the most successful organisations and industries think in advance what they might be, and how they might respond. Tourism 2023 will explore a range of possible future scenarios for the UK outbound tourism industry. This will help the industry to develop business strategies that can be robust in any future.
Using scenarios for futures thinking was a technique developed during the 1980s by Shell. Crucially, one of the scenarios anticipated the Soviet Union collapsing and the end of the Cold War. This thinking enabled the company to rapidly capitalise on new opportunities during the dramatic events of 1989.
Scenario planning is now used by a large number of governments, businesses and organisations around the world. If you haven’t seen them already, you may be interested in some of the work we did last year with Tesco and Unilever: Retail Futures
The language of sustainable development where assets are protected and enriched for ‘future generations’ – is highly relevant to an industry whose resources are so under threat. Futures thinking is integral to this approach as decisions made on the basis of short-term thinking only, often produce unsustainable results. By asking challenging questions about the long-term, we are forced to consider many of the environmental and social issues which will have dramatic impacts in time to come.
Engaging the industry and creating change
Instead of just responding to trends that threaten our future, we can shape them ourselves and create the change we all want to see. That’s why the Tourism 2023 project includes not only scenarios and an inspiring vision, but also a carefully developed strategy detailing how to get there.
During the project, we will document the wide variety of sustainability initiatives already happening in the industry and highlight the gaps where more needs to be done. Hopefully we’ll achieve consensus and clarity on where the industry wants to be in 15 years time and establish what sustainable tourism looks, sounds and feels like. We can then use this understanding to collectively engage and influence government.
No element of this project should distract from the important decisions needed here and now, but they should help make those decisions more considered and effective in the long-term.
Tourism 2023 is supported by a number of key players – TUI Travel, Thomas Cook, ABTA, The Travel Foundation, Carnival UK, The Co-operative Travel and British Airways. Our other collaborators include tour operators, transport providers, government, destinations, academia, technical specialists, travel media and innovators.
A senior level project Advisory Board is driving the project and taking forward recommendations. Ultimately, the proof will be in results – the project’s ability to inspire and then deliver change in the industry and a more sustainable future.
For more information on Tourism 2023 click here or email Vicky Murray.
Slow boats and fast trains
Fiona Bennie, May 19th 2008, Transport, Travel and tourism
Overland Heaven is now in full swing and the team at Forum is busy looking at the options available for overland travel to five destinations across Europe.
Most travellers are aware that they should be flying less due to air travel’s substantial contribution to climate change, but in practice this is easier said than done. There are very few ‘easy’ alternatives. As we’re finding out, booking air travel is accessible, quick and relatively simple – so why can’t booking a train or a coach to Seville be just as easy? This is what we’re trying to get to the bottom of through Overland Heaven.
We want to find ways to make overland travel productive, enjoyable and easy to book. We’d like to see travelling overland as the preferable choice over flying, harnessing its advantages such as central departures and arrivals, scenic routes, flexibility, lack of queues and security restrictions… the list goes on. Overland Heaven is all about creating ways to make the journey part of the holiday or business trip, not just a means for getting there.
We welcome any thoughts or insights as to why the travel industry isn't already doing more to promote and sell overland holidays. Are there techical or legal barriers that make overland holidays difficult to arrange? Or is it simply a question of supply and demand? Could the industry do more to create a market for overland holidays? Post your thoughts here.
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