The 2020 pandemic and previous years’ overtourism issues showed us both the benefits, the relevance, and the limits of the tourism, hospitality and leisure industries for society. We cannot foresee the future, but we can listen to challenges and start developing solutions.
So far we have received more than 900 responses in which these questions have been discussed::
How should we IMAGINE tourism now that we have an opportunity to reset the way we do business?
Which CHANGES would you like to see? If any?
What are your CHALLENGES and CONCERNS?
What are your IDEAS and SOLUTIONS to make it through the pandemic AND into a sustainable and innovative future of tourism?
In the name of the global tourism family, many thanks to every single one of you for the inspiring feedback. Your replies are summarized in the sections below.
Don't forget to share YOUR insights (for the first time or again, with new observations):
The 10 quotes below are updated every few minutes and elephant word-clouds are recalculated regularly based on your new survey entries. You have to refresh the page or revisit us every so often to see the changed content.
I NEED
Open borders for travel. Accurate and up-to-date information on new epicenters of infections. (August, 2020)
Tourism employee
Slovenia
Explore #TourismFromZero perspectives
Different perspectives on the selected topic: ALL
Tourism business representative
Bosnia Herzegovina
Tourist
Singapore
Tourism business representative
Slovakia
#From Instagram
TOURISM MEANS
For me, tourism has just as much to do with locality as with business. I believe that we need to discuss tourism not only from a touristic point of view, but rather from a perspective where local businesses, infrastructure, cultural institutions and the local societies in total is taken into consideration as the foundation for all tourism. Since tourism affects all parts of a local community, tourism development should work bottom-up, where locals are involved to ensure that development follows up on the locals values and needs for their own society. With this approach, tourism can add to sustainable growth and welfare, contribute to increased cultural understanding and respect and be a part of the environmental solutions. (May, 2020)
Tourism or convention office, event organizer
Norway
CHALLENGES
What probably challenged me the most was reducing social contacts and interactions with friends or family members. After that long time I even started missing going to university, while working from home in front of your laptop. (October, 2020)
Student
Austria
CONCERNS
I am worried that executives will lay off even more employees. (August, 2020)
Tourism employee
Slovenia
IDEAS
The current inability to meet physically will place a future premium on face to face meetings, especially if these decline in frequency. We wil probably see a rise in digital meetings (particularly now everybody is on Zoom), and people will start to use physical meetings not just as a way to have face to face experiences, but also to escape the tyranny of omnipresent digital meetings. (May, 2020)
Researcher, academic
Netherlands
I CAN OFFER
Digital marketing, Consulting, Guests research, Data-driven decisions (May, 2020)
Tourism or convention office, event organizer
Slovenia
I NEED
Perhaps creating a small, inspired group of us for idea sharing, innovation and fostering creative thinking as we are all, in one way or the other, locked into the square box thinking (May, 2020)
Researcher, academic
Croatia
SOLUTIONS
A very cool best practice I found is placed in Alta Badia. In this summer every hut and restaurant in the mountains is offering the possibility to take away the lunch in a picnic basket. With this service, you don't have to sit down on a table but you can join your meal on a meadow. (June, 2020)
Student
Italy
EXPLOITATION
It´s sad that there are so many cheaters who just want to get all the money which is spend by the state to help the little enterprises to survive the crisis, so that those who really need the money, don´t have any chance to work against their problems ... (June, 2020)
Student
Germany
OTHER / SPOTTED
I think that every organization/company... should start to prepare some kind of plan. They should try to adapt and work from home, come up with alternatives so they don't completely lose costumers/visitors...For example many museums started to offer virtual tours. (March, 2020)
