What's Changing? - Travel

Please see below selected recent travel-related change.

See also:

January 2024

The School Of Life noted that we’re used to thinking of travel as the ‘fun’ bit of life, but enjoyment isn’t a reason why it shouldn’t also do some very serious things for us. At its deepest level, travel can assist us with our psychological education. It can - when it helps correct the imbalances and immaturities of our natures, travel reveals its full potential to function as a form of therapy in our lives.

August 2023

A Danish man visited every country without using air travel. It was very difficult, it took 10 years, and involved cerebral malaria, noted Quartz.

May 2023

India’s domestic air travel industry set a record, with 456,082 people taking flights in a single day. The milestone reflected rising incomes in Asia’s third-largest economy and now the world's most populous country. Meanwhile, after years of restrictions on their movement, Chinese travellers made 274 million domestic trips during the 2023 May Day holiday, 19% more than during the same period in 2019, before COVID hit.

April 2023

Any destination we find ourselves drawn to may reflect an underlying sense of what is currently missing or under-supported in our lives. We can be seeking, through our travels, not just to see new places, but also to become fuller, more complete beings. The destination promises to correct imbalances in our psyches, for we are all inevitably a little lacking or excessive in one area or another. The place we go to should, ideally, help to teach us certain lessons that we know we need to hear. Our destinations are therefore a guide to, and a goad for, who we are trying to become, argued The School of Life.

December 2022

Further reading:
- Business travel will never make a comeback - Quartz

October 2022

For the ethically-minded traveller, online carbon-footprint calculators can help estimate the climate impact of a trip, based on which mode of transport is used. Research shows, for example, that a full bus is a relatively low-carbon solution for travel. Travelling by train is another good option: it can cut carbon emissions by half, or more, when compared with taking a flight. Things get a little more complex however, when ones consider a flight’s occupancy rates: a Treehugger article noted that, if a plane is largely empty, the rate of emissions per passenger increases dramatically, so carpooling with other people would probably be more climate-friendly than riding on an unfilled plane, but a flight full of passengers is likely a better option, in terms of CO2 emissions, than travelling the same route by oneself in a petrol-powered car.

June 2022

Despite some attempts, it may be that no-one has yet written a complete psychological atlas of the world, outlining the so-called psychological virtues of places, but it’s a project that urgently needs to be undertaken, believes The School of Life. Such an atlas would align destinations with their inner potential. We could then ideally become more conscious travellers - aware that we were on a search for places that could deliver psychological virtues like ‘calm’ or ‘perspective,’ ‘sensuality’ or ‘rigour’.
Further reading:

April 2022

As many people rethought their travel habits after the pandemic, "longevity tourism" gained ground among those looking for a meaningful experience. This type of holiday involves visiting one of the world's so-called Blue Zones, or longevity hotspots in Sardinia, Greece, California, Costa Rica and Japan, where people live the longest, with many reaching well over 100 years of age. There are many parallels in the way people go about their lives in these regions – and travellers can learn from them in classes that range from shopping at a food market, to cooking and yoga etc.
COVID-19 led to countries asking travellers to present an ever-changing list of entry forms, QR codes, and testing reports to secure entry, and the emergence of new variants resulted in a number of wholesale travel bans between countries, however limited in duration. This resulted in a kind of “travel apartheid” against poorer nations, UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres warned, decrying blanket travel bans based on nationality as both “deeply unfair” and ultimately ineffective.
The world’s first flying car airport opened in the UK. Called a “vertiport,” the hub will also accommodate drones and other eVTOL (“electric vertical takeoff and landing”) aircrafts.

February 2022

The tourism industry is a significant contributor to the climate crisis, accounting for 8% of global emissions. However, as the world slowly re-opened up for travel following the pandemic, companies considered the environmental impact of holidays abroad. There are now multiple tools to navigate the complex task of finding (more) sustainable holiday options. Bouteco is an eco-travel platform that “spotlights hotels combining luxury and sustainability and aims to publicise pioneering eco-luxe hospitality” amd their list of recommendations spans the globe. Bouteco also has a consultancy division that “edutains” – that is, educates and entertains – hoteliers to change their purpose and perspective for greener futures. Bouteco, alongside partners The Long Run, Tree Sisters, and Tourism Declares Climate Emergency aren’t disincentivising travel, but trying to steer travellers in the right direction to limit the environmental and social impact of their holidays.

January 2022

According to new Airbnb data, half the nights booked on its platformin late 2021 were for stays longer than a week, while a fifth of nights were booked for stays longer than a month. For some, one month away from home wasn’t enough: over 100,000 Airbnb users booked stays of three months or longer last year. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky attributed the shift to the pandemic allowing for longer travel that blurs the line between work and holidays.

October 2021

Travellers will be able to make more eco-conscious decisions when deciding how to travel with a new feature from Google Flights, claimed the search giant. When searching for flight options, the feature will show carbon emission estimates for almost every trip. Google said the estimates will be based on a range of factors, including flight distance, the number of stops and aircraft type, as well as data from the European Environment Agency. While Google hopes the new information will change consumer behavior, it could "nudge airlines, too."
While youth comprise the largest segment of Africa's 1.3 billion-strong population, they are the least travelled, with the report showing 63% are yet to set foot in another African country. Breaking that down nationally, more than half of South Africans (56%) said they had travelled to at least one country in the continent, followed by East Africans (35%), West Africans (33%) and North Africans (22%).

September 2021

Global tourism is an industry with huge social, environmental and economic impacts. By 2030 there will be 1.8 billion tourist arrivals, generating almost 2000 million tons of CO2, as well as contributing around 10% to global GDP. However. operators are under increasing pressure from governments and NGOs and most importantly consumers to make practices more sustainable and elevate the positive socio-cultural, economic, and environmental aspects of tourism.
A Bloomberg survey of 45 large businesses in the U.S., Europe and Asia shows that 84% plan to spend less on travel post-pandemic. A majority of the respondents cutting travel budgets see reductions of between 20% and 40%, with about two in three slashing both internal and external in-person meetings. The ease and efficiency of virtual software, cost savings and lower carbon emissions were the primary reasons cited for the cutbacks. According to the Global Business Travel Association, spending on corporate trips could slide to as low as $1.24 trillion by 2024 from a pre-pandemic peak in 2019 of $1.43 trillion.

August 2021

Mass tourism took an unprecedented dip globally during the pandemic, inspiring some of the most heavily touristed cities and regions in the world to rethink what visitors mean to their economies and quality of life. For instance, a number of European cities are reportedly rethinking who they want to cater to, while Venice forced cruise ships to dock hours away.
Author Liam Heneghan drew on his experiences returning to his motherland, Ireland, to understand what it means to be "allokataplixic", that feeling of newness we often carry with us when visiting a new place.

June 2021

For The School of Life, the rhythmic motion of an easy stride helps to separate us from the ruts of our current preoccupations and allows us to wander more freely through elected regions of our inner landscape. Themes we’d lost touch with float into attention. In physical terms, we’re hardly going any distance at all, but we’re crossing acres of mental territory. A short while later, we’re back at the office or at home once again, subtly different: a slightly more complete, more visionary, courageous and imaginative version of the person we knew how to be – before we "wisely" went out journeying.

May 2021

The pandemic brought business travel to a halt, and as a result, corporations saw their carbon footprints drastically reduce. Many companies used this decline to re-evaluate and recommit to new sustainability goals and Fast Company argued that the planet's health is "at risk" if these commitments are not kept. In addition, sustainable tourism experts say the pandemic "pulled back the curtain" on what may have been previously considered necessary business travel.

March 2021

Baby boomers who got vaccinated early in the US, Canada and the UK led "a wave of new travel bookings," with the pent up demand welcome news for the pandemic-ravaged travel and hospitality industries. A survey by an RV membership program showed almost 75% of travellers over 65 said they planned to hit the road in early 2021, even if they had to leave unvaccinated family members behind.
The pandemic badly damaged the global tourism industry, inflicting a crippling blow on many economies that rely heavily on outside visitors to stay afloat. But as tourist hotspots look ahead to life after all the testing and social distancing requirements of COVID, some overcrowded destinations started to think about ways that post-pandemic tourism can be more sustainable, less disruptive to everyday life, and healthier for the whole economy.

February 2021

As governments contended with increasing threats from new coronavirus variants and lockdown fatigue within their populations, many turned to border controls as a means of controlling the virus. Chatham House assessed the effectiveness and impacts of border control measures and travel restrictions and addressed such key questions as:
- How are various countries approaching the issue of border control and international travel?
- Why is there so much variation in the way countries are approaching points of entry controls?
- What is the evidence on how border controls affect COVID spread?
- Is it possible to travel internationally in a COVID-secure way, and if so, how?
- And when might international travel return to some kind of 'normal'?

January 2021

McKinsey noted that people who travel for pleasure will want to get back to doing so in 2021. That has already been the pattern in China. The CEO of one major travel company noted that, beginning in the third quarter of 2020, business was “pretty much back to normal” when referring to growth. But it was a different normal: domestic travel was surging, but international travel was still depressed given pandemic-related border restrictions and concerns about health and safety.
Quartz noted that while tourism wasn’t yet back by early 2021, but "vaccine tourism" was already a thing. The US state of Florida is putting in place residency requirements for receiving vaccines, after reports that visitors from other states - and some from Argentina - had traveled there for the jabs.

November 2020

Business travel may never fully recover post-pandemic, according to a survey across nine countries by Oliver Wyman. 63% of respondents planned to travel for leisure at least as much as before the pandemic. But 43% expect to travel less for business due to health concerns and the effectiveness of remote work. Even in its most optimistic scenario, the management consulting firm didn't see business travel recovering before 2023.

October 2020

Overall, the most efficient ways to travel are via walking, bicycle, or train. Using a bike instead of a car for short trips would reduce your travel emissions by ~75%. Taking a train instead of a car for medium-length distances would cut your emissions by ~80%. Using a train instead of a domestic flight would reduce your emissions by ~84%. Over short to medium distances, walking or cycling are nearly always the lowest carbon way to travel. While not in the chart, the carbon footprint of cycling one kilometre is usually in the range of 16 to 50 grams CO2eq per km depending on how efficiently you cycle and what you eat,

August 2020

If the coronavirus pandemic leads to long-lasting change in travel patterns, then transport will have to adapt. Indeed, many of these problems were already on the table before the pandemic struck. We were already facing an intractable conflict between our desire to fly and the threat of climate change. Changing patterns of work and demography were already threatening the current model of public transport.
Africa’s fast-growing tourism industry could lose up to $120 billion and millions of jobs. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Africa’s tourism industry had just become the second fastest growing in the world. But with industry stakeholders including safari operators, hotels and flights all hobbled by coronavirus restrictions, Quartz explained the widespread impact on tourism across the continent.

July 2020

As airlines begin to see an uptick in demand, experts predict that business travel will likely take years to recover and may never look the same post-pandemic. While business travellers make up 10% of passengers on major airlines, they account for up to 70% of industry sales, and airlines have long counted on them for purchasing premium tickets and services like airline credit cards and airport lounge memberships. With businesses cutting back on travel budgets, virtual meeting platforms are pushing companies to rethink the necessity of both internal corporate travel and one-meeting trips.
Covid-19 devastated global travel and as the industry recovers from the effects of the pandemic, tourism will be increasingly localised and complicated. This won’t just affect foreign holidays; it could disrupt the workings of the globalised world.
A desire to build memories, to connect with people, and to see new places drove 1.4 billion to travel internationally in 2019. Creating safer travel experiences will now be paramount to protect this privilege, warned BCG.

June 2020

After months of tight border restrictions meant to stop the spread of coronavirus, countries across the EU cautiously reopened to tourists from elsewhere in the union.Tourism is big business in Europe, accounting for 10 percent of the EU's GDP and some 27 million jobs across the bloc.

May 2020

International tourism was expected to fall by 70% in 2020 this biggest slump since the 1950s, according to the UN World Tourism Organisation. In an interview with Germany newspaper Handelsblatt, agency chief Zurab Pololikashvili said 110 million jobs worldwide were at risk.
Japan recorded its steepest drop in tourism in over fifty years, with just 2,900 foreign nationals entering the country last month, a dip of more than 99.9 percent compared to the previous year. In 2018, the last year for which comprehensive data is available, around 7 percent of Japan's total GDP came from tourism.
Spain, which draws about 15 percent of its total GDP from tourism, stands to lose as much as 92 billion euros in revenue this year as a result of travel bans.

November 2019

The Faroe Islands closed to tourists for a weekend, while selected ‘voluntourists’ worked to conserve and restore popular locations, a move that raised awareness of over-tourism and secured a bit of free labour.
It used to be that people traveled abroad to experience new cultures and learn history. These days, many increasingly do so to spice up their Instagram and related feeds. Many tour operators are responding accordingly, offering photographers and itineraries designed specifically to produce pictures worthy of social media, as Hpictures worth of social media.

October 2019

Japan’s All Nippon Airways (ANA) unveiled plans to deploy 1,000 telepresence robots as surrogates for people who are unable to travel – due to health condition, disability, or conflicting schedules – by 2020. Called Newme, the 1.5m tall robot has a tablet attached to the top as the user’s virtual face and a remote control. It can travel at 1.8mph with three hours of battery life. The user can use a VR headset to experience the environment through the robot's perspective.
Travel and tourism is expected to contribute an average 9 million new jobs per year to 2028 and representing around one quarter of total global net job creation.

June 2019

Hotels lost $365 million in revenue to Airbnb in 2016 alone, claimed Exponential View.
Quartz published a guide to travelling intelligently, efficiently, and "with your sanity intact", by providing the "perfect" packing strategy.
According to the International Passenger Survey, and the Air Transport Action Group, the aviation industry accounts for 12% of all transport-related CO2 emissions in the UK.

May 2019

GZEROMedia noted that Chinese tourism to the US dropped 5.7% in 2018 from the year prior, marking the first time that figure has declined year-on-year since 2003. That's real money lost -in 2017 Chinese tourists spent $18.8 billion dollars while visiting the US.

December 2018

How will people travel in the future, asked The Economist. From flying cars to pods that travel at over 1,000kph, companies are dreaming up new ways to travel. But which pioneering visions are most likely to take off?
Further reading:
- Five futuristic modes of transport transforming travel - Raconteur

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