Arnie triggered a code. It was something he had written. The words were right. The tone was right. He was focused on the biggest issue that faces travel and tourism, which is acting to reverse climate change.
Arnie Weissmann is the editor-in-chief of the travel trade’s trusted voice, Travel Weekly. Like a wise uncle, he had parried the leader of America’s travel and tourism advocacy network after listening to that colleague’s opening presentation at an associated organization’s summit held this February in San Diego.
Arnie was almost upbraiding himself for a lesson not yet learned along the way by his counterpart.
He calls his weekly column From The Window Seat. He introduces readers to his outlook.
He had triggered in me a lesson I had learned 70 years before from my logic prof at Union College, Harold A. Larrabee.
A protocol of civility
Arnie and I had what Prof. Larrabee termed “a high level of presupposition.” We didn’t have to test each other a lot before we knew that we attached the same meanings to words. When at one point Arnie wrote that “I raised my hand to ask a question,” he signified a protocol of civility that I shared.
In his column of February 15 titled “The recovery-versus-overtourism paradox,” Arnie asked “Is leisure travel’s apparent boom masking an uneven recovery? Geoff Freeman, CEO of U.S. Travel, knows that it is.” Freeman had pointed out how the recovery hasn’t yet included business, inbound and group travel. He cited visa delays, inflation, labor shortages, and public health concerns.
“Ten years ago, if you ran a destination, you weren’t really worried about affordable housing for your workforce,” Freeman said. “But the truth is, every one of these problems is bigger than every one of us. Bigger than our industry. I worry about focus and where we can put our limited resources to make a difference. I think, for U.S. Travel, we stay focused on a unique mission: Increased travel, full stop.
“Obviously, some people don’t want more visitors to their ski town. We need a strategy to address that, and the strategy can’t be ‘OK, you win.’ The strategy is, how do we get where we want to go together?” Larrabee winces.
Arnie also knows that the potential impacts of tourism can breed business-killing resentment in communities that feel overwhelmed by visitation, and that travel directly connects to a particular set of words on Freeman’s presentation slide: Overtourism. Travel boycotts. Food waste. Single-use plastics. Climate.
In the following panel that Arnie moderated — “What Sustainability Means in the U.S.” — Cathy Ritter, CEO of Better Destinations, noted that “destinations where I’m working that tend to have too many visitors are feeling the impacts.
“It’s very important when we talk about increasing travel to make certain we’re doing it in a way that will benefit the perception of tourism and support for tourism,” Ritter said. “Attracting the wrong kind of traveler creates a backlash against tourism that can take years to repair.”
Added Arnie, “Ritter’s observation is not incompatible with Freeman’s assumed end goal of increasing his members’ revenue and profits, though it suggests a more nuanced approach than ‘increased travel, full stop.’ While everyone understands the concept ‘less is more,’ its opposite, ‘more is less,’ can at times be equally true.”
[As this is written, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has issued its most dire warnings. A summary by The Washington Post concludes that human activities have already caused “irreversible damage to communities and ecosystems (while) global emissions continue to rise, and current carbon-cutting efforts are wildly insufficient to ward off climate catastrophe.”]
A recent turning point
Arnie tells me there was a turning point at the 2007 World Travel and Tourism Council Global Summit where the group, for the first time, addressed the issue of climate change. A senior executive with Emirates Airlines warned against what he called “global warming hysteria.” Another speaker countered, “Don’t let travel become the next Philip Morris.”
Arnie again: “I think that if that advice had been listened to a little bit more closely, we might not see the travel shaming and the reaction that people are having. . . A lot of my friends for the first time in this past year have started calling me out about how I justify my travels. I say that I buy carbon offsets. But I know that that’s only being carbon neutral when we need to be carbon positive.”
He cites advances in sustainable aviation fuel, and even within the cruise trade, a compact between the Royal Caribbean Group and the World Wildlife Fund to make a positive impact on both the oceans and coastal destinations that also motivates guests and industry peers to join in. Goals are set for which falling short results in donations by RCG to the Fund.
”We’re racing the clock and falling behind”
It doesn’t help that tourism divides into airlines and game preserves, Ritz-Carltons and hiking yurts. What works for an ecolodge may not weigh in as persuasively at a Hyatt Grand Regency.
Arnie says, “the biggest challenge for consumers, for travel agents, for anybody is to be able to truly separate greenwashing from natural progress.”
He points to the Norwegian Hurtigruten Cruise Line that in 2016 withdrew from the Cruise Lines International Association that hedges on addressing climate change.
Yet when citing Hurtigruten’s expedition fleet that switches to enormous battery packs to avoid polluting sensitive local waters, he asks at what environmental cost the batteries are produced?
In his lifetime, Arnie has witnessed global population soar from 2 billion to pushing 8 billion. “So if I’m hot and thirsty and there’s a plastic bottle of cold water imported from Fiji at hand, it’s easy for me to justify picking it up. If I’m only one-eight billionth of the problem, I can easily rationalize that not drinking it won’t really have an impact on climate change. I’m thirsty. Why should I deny myself for such minimal effect? That’s why, in part, we find ourselves where we are.”
Learning from off-season travel
Arnie was just back from a rare nonworking vacation when we spoke. He and his wife had visited the Azores in the winter off-season. The people he met there said that, even though it was rainy, windy and cold, he was seeing the real Azores, undistorted by the hordes of tourists who arrive each summer.
But Arnie and his wife are birders, and sought the quiet of winter to observe an endemic bullfinch, of which only a few hundred remain on Sao Miguel island, and to contemplate a rare topography where three tectonic plates undergird the nine islands, some of which remain active with fumaroles and hot springs. The youngest island in the chain, Pico, emerged from the sea only 300,000 years ago. Its unique 700-year-old viniculture, which uses lava rocks to build maze-like vineyards, has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Although bad weather interrupted a plan for them to climb Mt. Pico, the volcano that dominates the island, and rough seas prevented a whale
watching excursion, the Weissmanns had no complaints: it was a good place to experience origins and our evolving selves.
NOTES
https://www.ipcc.ch/assessment-report/ar6/]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/03/20/climate-change-ipcc-report-15/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F3976f5d%2F641893a0e7f5585f19d65833%2F5eb83f75ae7e8a43601a6c84%2F8%2F68%2F641893a0e7f5585f19d65833&wp_cu=62171db5ad05dd88fa76bd7352ee83fd%7CA54FE4CA457D412BE0530100007F34DA. Also see https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/19/what-is-the-ipcc-ar6-synthesis-report-and-why-does-it-matter, and https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/05/ipcc-report-scientists-climate-crisis-fossil-fuels
https://www.travelweekly.com/Arnie-Weissmann/The-recovery-versus-overtourism-paradox
https://www.worldwildlife.org/business/royal-caribbean-group
https://cruise-adviser.com/hurtigruten-to-leave-clia/
https://www.visitazores.com/en
Tech support by Eric Marakovits
