Why does this year’s 52 Places to Go come across as lightweight compared to 2022? Last year The Times declared that travelers could be part of the “solution,” no longer part of the “problem” of mass travel. Liberty at the barriers. Allons!
This year’s list claims that people want to travel again for food, culture, adventure, and natural beauty. Visitors can also help fund regeneration after Australia’s and California’s catastrophic fires. Travelers on the Alaska Railroad suck in history whenever trains on this last remaining independent railroad in the country stop to board flag-stop passengers.
But it all sounds optional at a time when we need to feel the urgency that doesn’t measure up to the travel desk’s own awareness that last year’s 52 Places ranked as “one of our signature pieces of journalism . . . in a world turned upside down.” This year’s list continues to select experiences that climate travelers can expect around the world, but with only a single reference to climate change or travel as climate action that on the day after 52 Places 2022 appeared was nailed to the church door.
The year became the worst ever for climate change.
Respected analysts agree that tourism accounts for between eight to 11 percent of the problem. Little had been done in the three years since climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe had urged the House Committee on the Budget that the U.S. take action to protect its tourism dependence from the Pacific to the Caribbean. The travel industry got the Assistant Secretary for Travel and Tourism that it wanted in the Department of Commerce, but hardly likely there to lead on climate action.
Although The Times gave space to the travel industry for feckless attempts at showing climate impetus, foot-dragging continues unabating. U.S. Travel Association President and CEO Geoff Freeman called the late-year Cabinet level announcement, “a tremendous win for travelers, the travel industry and America’s economy.” The USTA represents the American travel industry. It does not speak to popular rethinking of extractive travel. Still vibrant from last year was The Times declaration that “We are especially keen on places where grass-roots efforts are pushing transformation making their patch of the world better in the face of all that is wrong.”
The Times was hardly silent in advocacy reports.
There was How to Travel Like a local and another on plans for a National Monument less than two hours from Las Vegas that would avoid an urban fester. Much more appears at The Times travel website. Also in recent archives and more pertinent than ever was Livia Albeck-Ripka’s report from January 2020 on what it takes to Be A More Sustainable Traveler. One tip: avoid fuel-inefficient short air trips to places nearby as, for instance, to the National Park dedicated last year at Ocmulgee Mounds in Georgia, my state, a 2.7-mile bike ride from downtown Macon with its independent hotels and farm-to-fork restaurants.
The list weighs in more quirky than stellar with its lead of London, I suppose compulsory for its first coronation in seven decades, though designation does cite a new Underground link between Heathrow and the Central Burroughs. Warming my Caribbean heart, there’s Martinique, twice honored in recent years as a UNESCO heritage site now cited for its commitment to sustainable economic and social development.
Other commentary through the year appeared notably in Sarah Stodola’s The Last Resort that complained about beach tourism, and at least for me, in a Kenyan collaboration about The Big Conservation Lie of safari tourism that I came upon only last year. A singular piece about Puerto Rico by founding editor Dennis Schall of Skift, the gold standard of travel research for the industry, opened this way: “Puerto Rico tourism, bolstered by Airbnb when hotels were shut, has had a noteworthy comeback. But if travel and living have blended, then the island’s fiscal and political woes can’t be overlooked.” Schaff’s story, hardly veneer travel writing, went on to report on the “impact of Airbnb, tourism, U.S. colonialism, and unfettered development on the island’s people.”
What might come next
Schall was onto something. We have suffered from deep mission creep in hospitality, from when inns lay beyond build-up and attracted not merely Christian pilgrims but also scoundrels of feigned benevolence who robbed them. Hotel chains in particular see themselves increasingly integrated into how Americans should live. In what one leading chain calls the new “hybrid way of life,” or in the blending of virtual worksites into “bleisure,” hotels “explore hospitality living” by exploiting new opportunity for family-friendly or longer stay options.
According to Markus Keller, chief sales and distribution office of the global French chain Accor, “Guest expectations have changed dramatically over recent years, with the need for alternatives to the traditional workplace setting being greatly accelerated by Covid that “has created a stronger desire for more authentic, personalized, and sustainable experiences that can be experienced not only far from home but also within local communities close to nature, and to the places where individuals live and work.
“This trend now sees people frequently commuting a few hours from home to discover new cities and locations where they can experience living as a local [with new] cultures, environments, and foods as part of their work week. This all needs to be facilitated and guided by hospitality providers who can instill guests with the confidence and inspiration to try new ways of working.”
This is part of massive pushback from an industry increasingly under assault. No surprise that when at year’s end The Times interviewed a hubristic Julia Simpson, chief executive of the industry-led World Travel and Tourism Council, she introduced a WTTC initiative into “nature positive travel. . . a big shout-out for nature.” And then spinning that “Some hotels in the tropics are connecting the consumer with the nature around them — often, even food will be sourced locally.”
What strikes Simpson as borderline coo-coo is simply what’s happening in the leading Caribbean all-inclusive chain, Sandals, where for twice the normal package price, guests can drive a resort car for a day and enjoy “a five star” off-site dinner that Sandals pays for.
Disclaiming revolution but not greenwashing
“None of this is a revolution,” says Adam Stewart, executive chairman of Sandals Resorts International, whose father Butch founded the hotel chain in the early 1980s. “It’s an evolution.”
Which is to say if not slow, then limited.
What Stewart trumpets as largesse only further obscures how tourism would work if tied to climate change, not by driving visitors from airports to remote beach resorts with their still imported luxuries but by incentivizing locally owned inns in villages where social immersion leaves social change in local hands to decide what to do with.
Stewart is saying and the Post reporting on what governments adapting to climate change would be setting as tourism policy aimed at travelers increasingly sensitized to climate action as a principle. Nor would you need a car for a day at some remote beach all-inclusive. Instead a walk out the front door of your locally-owned in-town stay at a popular beach, or bike there, take a bus or ride-share. Destination marketing organizations need to direct the large and growing market that seeks the climate benefits.
Skift projects that the year will be one of action for the travel industry on the climate. “But don’t expect radical changes, rather incremental steps and greater alignment as the industry attempts to shake off its negative image.”
Hayhoe says we have to talk about climate change with the people around us. “Talk with them about why it matters and work together to find solutions that you can do on your own or with your community.”
Otherwise, we’re not acting fast enough.
NOTES
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/travel/52-places-travel-2023.html
https://www.alaskarailroad.com/
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/travel/52-places-travel-2022.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/10/travel/a-different-kind-of-52.html
https://earth.org/2022-natural-disasters/
https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/travel/2022/01/will-cop26-be-a-turning-point-for-tourism
https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/travel/2022/01/will-cop26-be-a-turning-point-for-tourism
https://www.nytimes.com/guides/travel/travel-like-a-local,/
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/24/travel/nevada-avi-kwa-ame-national-monument.html
https://www.nytimes.com/guides/travel/how-to-travel-sustainably
https://www.nps.gov/ocmu/index.htm
Sarah Stodala, Tbe Last Resort, ISBN 978–0–06–295162–5
John Mbaria & Mordecai Ogada, The Big Conservation Lie, Isbn 10; 0692787216
https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2023/01/26/all-inclusive-resorts-culture-
https://skift.com/2023/01/10/climate-impact-moves-from-marketing-to-operations/
tech support by Ted Wendler
