The trouble with travel
Another travel company bites the dust. Thousands are stranded overseas. Some are stuck at home with no prospect of that dream holiday or romantic wedding abroad this year. For the mainstream press, of course, this is pay dirt. Lots of poignant human-interest stories, plenty of expert commentary to call on, column inches aplenty to be generated on what this means, and what we all should be doing about it.
The travel industry’s response is, of course, unanimous: we should all keep travelling. Book your holiday with confidence – but don’t forget to take out a new class of insurance that protects you if your holiday company goes bust. Take advantage of the price wars that are ensuing between those companies still in business to get the cheapest deals available.
The not-so-subtle message is clear: it’s the public’s fiscal responsibility to save an industry from which it has derived so much. And if we wish to continue to gain intercultural experiences, consciousness-expanding horizons, access to exotica and the warm fuzziness that comes from knowing, as Walt Disney once said, it’s a small world after all, then we must keep investing in travel. And those companies that remain are rubbing their hands with glee: more businesses going down the pan means a bigger slice of the travel pie for those remaining.
And that bottom line really is the bottom line. According to the World Travel and Tourism Council in March of last year, the global travel industry was on target to generate sales of US$8trillion in 2008 – and that in a year of slow growth – and the prediction, in spite of the economic slowdown, is for sales to increase annually by 4.4 per cent between now and 2018. It’s a staggering figure, but one wonders whether perhaps those predictions are now being quietly revised, given that some 26 travel companies and airlines went bust in the past year. In spite of all the predicted revenue generation, you still have to wonder: is the travel industry worth saving?
Tourist trapped
In the days before an airport in every city and a travel voucher in every newspaper, travel may well have been about exploration, exposing yourself to the unknown, absorbing new ideas and cultures, and seeing how the other half of the world lives and reflecting on what this means to the way you live. There’s a quote by Mark Twain, favoured by those travel writers who are still enamoured with that idea: ‘Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness…’, it begins. These days, it could be argued that this notion is deep-fried hogwash.
Most of us aren’t travellers at all – we’re tourists, as vulnerable to the process of commodification as the places we visit. A homogenous group of dopey beasts who take cattle-class flights at 3am, organise stag nights in Prague, and demand egg and chips and a beer whose name we can easily pronounce on a sunny beach in Spain. The smaller the world gets, the more we seem to want it to be as much like home as possible (but with cleaner sheets and towels and without the washing up).
Last year, a survey for Halifax Travel Insurance revealed the extent of the cultural experience of the average British holidaymaker. Not so much culture vultures as poolside potatoes, of the more than 2,000 holidaymakers questioned, most spent no more than eight hours away from their hotels during a week’s holiday. Three quarters never attempted to learn the local language and 70 per cent never visited a local attraction. Most never took a meal outside the hotel restaurant. It hardly seems worth the £64billion Britons spend on holidays every year – around 80 per cent of which is paid for by credit cards and, according to a survey by Alliance & Leicester in 2007, a significant proportion of which hasn’t been paid off by the time we book our next holiday.
Eco no-no
But travel, we’re told, is good for us. It’s good for the places we visit, for generating foreign income and investment, for providing jobs and preserving culture. And if we can do so much ‘good’ just sitting by a pool for a week, where’s the harm?
According to the UN, tourism is the world’s biggest industry, employing about 220 million people worldwide. But according to Tourism Concern’s Sun, Sand, Sea and Sweatshops report, working conditions in the tourism industry are notoriously exploitative. Many employees don’t earn a living wage, can’t join trade unions, suffer stress and poor working conditions, work long hours, and aren’t paid for overtime.
In prime tourist destinations, governments are often more interested in maintaining tourist economies than ecosystems, even if it means displacement, cultural conflicts and unacceptable working practices. All of which raises several questions. Where is the evidence that tourism helps developing countries and communities over the long term? What cultural foundations and skills for survival will we have left them with when the entire focus of their economies, of their livelihoods, has for decades been to cater to the whims of foreigners? How will they survive when the oil supplies dry up and tourists are forced to take their leisure closer to their homes?
Aware of these issues, and the bad press that has arisen from them over the years, the travel industry has reinvented itself as ‘sustainable’. Increasingly, it claims to be pursuing the ecotourism agenda. You can barely open a newspaper these days without seeing companies trumpeting their social responsibility policies, offering offset schemes so you can fly guilt-free, or glossy articles focusing on a select menu of green resorts for the environmentally conscious traveller.
But do this before you fly: define ecotourism. If you can’t, you’re not alone – the travel industry can’t either. Groups such as the UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) and Sustainable Travel International struggle to get their own definitions writ into the language of travel, and the UNWTO has just announced a voluntary set of criteria for sustainable tourism, but there is no Fairtrade mark or organic certification scheme for the package tour.
A lack of regulation works in the industry’s favour. Companies can engage in a back-slapping green free-for-all that allows them to develop their own standards, not according to what is good for the environment or for local culture but to what is good for business. An ‘eco-holiday’ could mean helping to build mud huts in an African village or bungee jumping in an area of outstanding natural beauty, before retiring to your concrete and glass hotel with 24-hour air conditioning and a waste pipe that leads straight into the sea.
In truth, ecotourism sits in the same specialised space as other niche travel opportunities such as golf tourism, transplant tourism and sex tourism. And maybe you could forgive a multinational company for doing what it’s supposed to – that is, trying to sell you something – if it weren’t for the fact that the pretty lies hide a dirty secret: ecotourism can be just as environmentally damaging as regular tourism. In fact, wherever people go, everything suffers, from dolphins to dingoes and penguins to polar bears.
Not long ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that the boom in ecotourism to the Galápagos Islands was having a devastating effect on wildlife there. Unsustainable development, an influx of workers from the mainland and introduced species were, it said, putting endemic biodiversity and habitats at risk. Even in the forests of California, scientists have found that hiking, wildlife watching and similar ‘low-impact’ activities can interfere with the mating habits of bobcats and coyotes. Where the ecotourists went, there was a fivefold reduction in numbers of these animals, and after banning the tourists, their numbers rose again. Our sense of the fragility and interconnectedness of the planet’s natural systems is still, it seems, as shallow as ever, and our sense of stewardship non-existent.
Travel sickness
Of course, such effects don’t even begin to address the totality of travel’s impact. For instance, most of us will take a plane to our eco-destinations, and no matter which way the industry tries to spin it, there is no such thing as green flying.
According to the EU, aviation accounts for three per cent of Europe’s carbon dioxide emissions. In the UK, it’s about six per cent. But these figures are misleading, because every country has its own way of collecting data, which often doesn’t include emissions from charter flights or some international routes. The real figures are apt to be substantially higher.
While the fuel efficiency of planes has increased by around 1.2 per cent a year, this needs to be viewed in the context of an industry that is growing at a rate of eight per cent a year, and is predicted to quadruple in size between 1990 and 2050.
The growth of the aviation industry is in direct conflict with the need to reduce CO2 emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 in order to avoid irreversible climate change. In fact, according to the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, if we were to accept an 80 per cent reduction target, and if aviation continues to grow as predicted, it will require the whole of the rest of the UK to be completely carbon neutral, simply to allow us to continue flying.
None of this takes into account the damage caused by contrails. Comprising toxic emissions of soot and sulphur dioxide, these high, thin, man-made clouds seed a type of high, thin cloud known as cirrus, which, in turn increases the temperature on the ground. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the climate-changing potential of contrails is nearly three times that of CO2.
So, if we want to keep on travelling, should we embrace the ‘slow travel’ ideal of the cruise ship? Nope. They are even bigger polluters than aeroplanes, generating 1.6 kilograms of CO2 per passenger kilometre, compared to 201 grams for a long-haul flight. In addition, in one week, a large cruise ship generates 800,000 litres of human sewage, 3.8 million litres of grey water (dirty water from sinks, baths and so forth), 95,000 litres of oily bilge water, 44,000 litres of sewage sludge and more than 490 litres of hazardous wastes. They contaminate shellfish beds and seafood, and are a threat to marine ecosystems.
Trains and coaches are less damaging, but making better use of them requires a government commitment to improving infrastructure and consumers to break their addiction to speed and distance, which doesn’t look likely anytime soon.
What about offsetting? Sorry: it’s largely a myth and almost completely unregulated. The Tyndall Centre calls it ‘a dangerous delaying tactic’. New trees planted in the name of air travel (and other eco-sins) are, depending on geography and climate, notoriously variable in their ability to act as carbon sinks, and some offsetting schemes in the USA and elsewhere are being used to finance coal plants and gasworks.
So, in the things that matter most now, the travel industry is insubstantial, unreliable and contributes so little to making the world a better place. Perhaps it’s time to consider razing it to the ground. That’s where it’s going to end up anyway.
If you want to make the world a better place, start with your own place. These days, we simply can’t afford to keep investing in a global business that wilfully destroys what the late astronomer Carl Sagan poignantly described as ‘the only home we’ve ever known’.
February 2009
The travel industry’s response is, of course, unanimous: we should all keep travelling. Book your holiday with confidence – but don’t forget to take out a new class of insurance that protects you if your holiday company goes bust. Take advantage of the price wars that are ensuing between those companies still in business to get the cheapest deals available.
The not-so-subtle message is clear: it’s the public’s fiscal responsibility to save an industry from which it has derived so much. And if we wish to continue to gain intercultural experiences, consciousness-expanding horizons, access to exotica and the warm fuzziness that comes from knowing, as Walt Disney once said, it’s a small world after all, then we must keep investing in travel. And those companies that remain are rubbing their hands with glee: more businesses going down the pan means a bigger slice of the travel pie for those remaining.
And that bottom line really is the bottom line. According to the World Travel and Tourism Council in March of last year, the global travel industry was on target to generate sales of US$8trillion in 2008 – and that in a year of slow growth – and the prediction, in spite of the economic slowdown, is for sales to increase annually by 4.4 per cent between now and 2018. It’s a staggering figure, but one wonders whether perhaps those predictions are now being quietly revised, given that some 26 travel companies and airlines went bust in the past year. In spite of all the predicted revenue generation, you still have to wonder: is the travel industry worth saving?
Tourist trapped
In the days before an airport in every city and a travel voucher in every newspaper, travel may well have been about exploration, exposing yourself to the unknown, absorbing new ideas and cultures, and seeing how the other half of the world lives and reflecting on what this means to the way you live. There’s a quote by Mark Twain, favoured by those travel writers who are still enamoured with that idea: ‘Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness…’, it begins. These days, it could be argued that this notion is deep-fried hogwash.
Most of us aren’t travellers at all – we’re tourists, as vulnerable to the process of commodification as the places we visit. A homogenous group of dopey beasts who take cattle-class flights at 3am, organise stag nights in Prague, and demand egg and chips and a beer whose name we can easily pronounce on a sunny beach in Spain. The smaller the world gets, the more we seem to want it to be as much like home as possible (but with cleaner sheets and towels and without the washing up).
Last year, a survey for Halifax Travel Insurance revealed the extent of the cultural experience of the average British holidaymaker. Not so much culture vultures as poolside potatoes, of the more than 2,000 holidaymakers questioned, most spent no more than eight hours away from their hotels during a week’s holiday. Three quarters never attempted to learn the local language and 70 per cent never visited a local attraction. Most never took a meal outside the hotel restaurant. It hardly seems worth the £64billion Britons spend on holidays every year – around 80 per cent of which is paid for by credit cards and, according to a survey by Alliance & Leicester in 2007, a significant proportion of which hasn’t been paid off by the time we book our next holiday.
Eco no-no
But travel, we’re told, is good for us. It’s good for the places we visit, for generating foreign income and investment, for providing jobs and preserving culture. And if we can do so much ‘good’ just sitting by a pool for a week, where’s the harm?
According to the UN, tourism is the world’s biggest industry, employing about 220 million people worldwide. But according to Tourism Concern’s Sun, Sand, Sea and Sweatshops report, working conditions in the tourism industry are notoriously exploitative. Many employees don’t earn a living wage, can’t join trade unions, suffer stress and poor working conditions, work long hours, and aren’t paid for overtime.
In prime tourist destinations, governments are often more interested in maintaining tourist economies than ecosystems, even if it means displacement, cultural conflicts and unacceptable working practices. All of which raises several questions. Where is the evidence that tourism helps developing countries and communities over the long term? What cultural foundations and skills for survival will we have left them with when the entire focus of their economies, of their livelihoods, has for decades been to cater to the whims of foreigners? How will they survive when the oil supplies dry up and tourists are forced to take their leisure closer to their homes?
Aware of these issues, and the bad press that has arisen from them over the years, the travel industry has reinvented itself as ‘sustainable’. Increasingly, it claims to be pursuing the ecotourism agenda. You can barely open a newspaper these days without seeing companies trumpeting their social responsibility policies, offering offset schemes so you can fly guilt-free, or glossy articles focusing on a select menu of green resorts for the environmentally conscious traveller.
But do this before you fly: define ecotourism. If you can’t, you’re not alone – the travel industry can’t either. Groups such as the UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) and Sustainable Travel International struggle to get their own definitions writ into the language of travel, and the UNWTO has just announced a voluntary set of criteria for sustainable tourism, but there is no Fairtrade mark or organic certification scheme for the package tour.
A lack of regulation works in the industry’s favour. Companies can engage in a back-slapping green free-for-all that allows them to develop their own standards, not according to what is good for the environment or for local culture but to what is good for business. An ‘eco-holiday’ could mean helping to build mud huts in an African village or bungee jumping in an area of outstanding natural beauty, before retiring to your concrete and glass hotel with 24-hour air conditioning and a waste pipe that leads straight into the sea.
In truth, ecotourism sits in the same specialised space as other niche travel opportunities such as golf tourism, transplant tourism and sex tourism. And maybe you could forgive a multinational company for doing what it’s supposed to – that is, trying to sell you something – if it weren’t for the fact that the pretty lies hide a dirty secret: ecotourism can be just as environmentally damaging as regular tourism. In fact, wherever people go, everything suffers, from dolphins to dingoes and penguins to polar bears.
Not long ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that the boom in ecotourism to the Galápagos Islands was having a devastating effect on wildlife there. Unsustainable development, an influx of workers from the mainland and introduced species were, it said, putting endemic biodiversity and habitats at risk. Even in the forests of California, scientists have found that hiking, wildlife watching and similar ‘low-impact’ activities can interfere with the mating habits of bobcats and coyotes. Where the ecotourists went, there was a fivefold reduction in numbers of these animals, and after banning the tourists, their numbers rose again. Our sense of the fragility and interconnectedness of the planet’s natural systems is still, it seems, as shallow as ever, and our sense of stewardship non-existent.
Travel sickness
Of course, such effects don’t even begin to address the totality of travel’s impact. For instance, most of us will take a plane to our eco-destinations, and no matter which way the industry tries to spin it, there is no such thing as green flying.
According to the EU, aviation accounts for three per cent of Europe’s carbon dioxide emissions. In the UK, it’s about six per cent. But these figures are misleading, because every country has its own way of collecting data, which often doesn’t include emissions from charter flights or some international routes. The real figures are apt to be substantially higher.
While the fuel efficiency of planes has increased by around 1.2 per cent a year, this needs to be viewed in the context of an industry that is growing at a rate of eight per cent a year, and is predicted to quadruple in size between 1990 and 2050.
The growth of the aviation industry is in direct conflict with the need to reduce CO2 emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 in order to avoid irreversible climate change. In fact, according to the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, if we were to accept an 80 per cent reduction target, and if aviation continues to grow as predicted, it will require the whole of the rest of the UK to be completely carbon neutral, simply to allow us to continue flying.
None of this takes into account the damage caused by contrails. Comprising toxic emissions of soot and sulphur dioxide, these high, thin, man-made clouds seed a type of high, thin cloud known as cirrus, which, in turn increases the temperature on the ground. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the climate-changing potential of contrails is nearly three times that of CO2.
So, if we want to keep on travelling, should we embrace the ‘slow travel’ ideal of the cruise ship? Nope. They are even bigger polluters than aeroplanes, generating 1.6 kilograms of CO2 per passenger kilometre, compared to 201 grams for a long-haul flight. In addition, in one week, a large cruise ship generates 800,000 litres of human sewage, 3.8 million litres of grey water (dirty water from sinks, baths and so forth), 95,000 litres of oily bilge water, 44,000 litres of sewage sludge and more than 490 litres of hazardous wastes. They contaminate shellfish beds and seafood, and are a threat to marine ecosystems.
Trains and coaches are less damaging, but making better use of them requires a government commitment to improving infrastructure and consumers to break their addiction to speed and distance, which doesn’t look likely anytime soon.
What about offsetting? Sorry: it’s largely a myth and almost completely unregulated. The Tyndall Centre calls it ‘a dangerous delaying tactic’. New trees planted in the name of air travel (and other eco-sins) are, depending on geography and climate, notoriously variable in their ability to act as carbon sinks, and some offsetting schemes in the USA and elsewhere are being used to finance coal plants and gasworks.
So, in the things that matter most now, the travel industry is insubstantial, unreliable and contributes so little to making the world a better place. Perhaps it’s time to consider razing it to the ground. That’s where it’s going to end up anyway.
If you want to make the world a better place, start with your own place. These days, we simply can’t afford to keep investing in a global business that wilfully destroys what the late astronomer Carl Sagan poignantly described as ‘the only home we’ve ever known’.
February 2009
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