For me, it’s simply about doing as much good as you can through travel, whilst also minimising any negative impacts. Taking the first part of this, I’m a strong believer that travel has a significant and positive influence on society across several areas.
The most obvious of these is the global redistribution of wealth. I completely understand that we have a ‘cost of living’ crisis in the UK at the moment, and for many, this is making life extremely difficult. In no way would I want to underestimate the seriousness of this for those particularly affected. However, our nation is still one of the wealthiest on the planet, and a lot of the things that many of us take for granted are simply out of reach in a lot of other parts of the world.
I read a recent article that suggested that over the last decade, in 46 of the 49 least developed nations, tourism has become one of the primary sources of economic income. Travel provides employment at both a skilled and non-skilled level, and builds infrastructure and wealth, which in turn can be used to improve health and education.
There are also well-documented areas where travelling a lot currently has some negative impact. I think we’re all aware now of our individual obligations to reduce the amount of greenhouse emissions we generate, and this is particularly the case within the travel industry. Whether by land, sea, or air, travelling clearly creates a carbon footprint and, whatever your personal beliefs might be, the government target of net zero by 2050 means, we’re all obligated to find a way to offset this.
Fortunately, there is a lot of excellent work already being done in this area, and I’m optimistic that through the creation of new and increasingly effective offsetting measures, as well as ongoing work on innovative technology solutions, the industry is already making good progress on this. As travel companies, we also have a particular responsibility to look at the partners we work with, both in the UK and abroad, to ensure that they are also doing the right thing.
In summary, I’m really pleased with our first steps on this journey. We all know that there are areas where the travel industry has work to do to become truly sustainable, but I think it sometimes gets a bit lost that the industry does do a lot of good, whether that be through the hundreds of millions of the people it employs all around the world, either directly or indirectly, to the redistribution of global wealth from richer places to poorer places. It also provides a lot of social benefits to those lucky enough to experience travelling to new places. As such this project is all about acknowledging that we have a lot to do and creating a plan to deliver positive change, but also sharing the importance of global travel.