The EconomistFebruary 13th 2021 Special reportThe future of travel 112
1improving the digital presence of tourist businesses.
Some parts of the tourist economy will do better than others.
Travel firms have noted a rising preference for self-catering and
private accommodation over hotels. Coastal and rural locations,
far from crowds, will recover faster than cities. Cyril Ranque of Ex-
pedia notes that his customers are more inclined to drive to do-
mestic locations but then to stay longer than before. But these
trends, he believes, are “all temporary”.Waiting for the rebound
The travel bug seems certain to outlast the virus. Its first manifes-
tation may be “revenge tourism” as people get away after a year of
lockdowns and quarantines. But some things will change for good.
A preoccupation in previous centuries, health and hygiene will re-
emerge as central to holiday planning. Guidebooks from Baedeker,
a German publisher, were never reticent about warning travellers
of the filth they faced in foreign climes even in the early 20th cen-
tury, bemoaning the “evil sanitary reputation of Naples”. Destina-
tions will continue to boast of their scenery, cuisine and beaches
but safety and hygiene will become as important, says Ian Yeo-
man, a tourism academic at Victoria University of Wellington,
New Zealand. This may benefit longer-established destinations,
tilting visitors away from poorer countries.
Those countries will not be deliberately trying to avoid tourists,
even so. Some remote places have used the hiatus to build a better
online presence, says Mr Ranque. He points to other innovations
to make travel less of a bother. Flexibility, to cope with last-minute
changes of plans, will endure. Late or even last-minute bookings
are more common. Josh Belkin of Hotels.com reports that, because
people are taking more staycations and travelling by car rather
than plane, they are booking hotels later, on average 13 days before
a trip rather than the 20 before covid-19.
Many travel companies and airlines have introduced more flex-
ible rebooking policies. Faced by a wave of cancellations as co-vid-19 took hold, Expedia introduced “one-click cancellation” to
deal with all elements from flights and hotels to car hire. Firms
that use its platform can deploy new tools to add special offers to
listings to encourage last-minute bookers and manage refunds.
Gathering real-time data on searches, and sharing them with busi-
nesses that relied on information from previous years to set prices,
could also lead to a better match between supply and demand and
encourage more dynamic pricing. In future, personalised custom-
er data should allow travel firms to recommend holidays in a more
focused way.
Covid-19 presents a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to move
towards more sustainable and resilient models of tourism devel-
opment”, says the oecd. “Tourism was seen as unambiguously
good 20 years ago...now it’s a double-edged sword,” says Paul Flat-
ters of the Trajectory Partnership. Concerns about the impact of
tourism on the environment predate the pandemic. But tourism
also broadens awareness of different cultures and environmental
issues and helps pay for wildlife conservation, as well as providing
employment and economic development.
Many destinations failed to strike a balance between tourist
numbers and local sensibilities. Venetians have long protested
against vast cruise ships, prompting some firms to drop the city
from their itineraries. Venice also plans to impose a levy on all visi-
tors from 2022. Anti-tourist slogans
daubed on walls have greeted visitors to
Barcelona, which has clamped down on il-
legal holiday letting (as have Berlin and
other places in which holiday lets have re-
placed rental properties, forcing up prices
for residents). Amsterdam is considering a
ban on non-residents buying cannabis in
its notorious coffee shops, to encourage a
better class of tourist. Machu Picchu,
where trails were overrun, imposed a pre-Correct distancing by the seaMany destina-
tions failed to
strike a balance
between tourist
numbers and
local sensibilities