Even before the pandemic there were signs that change was needed in the travel industry. With 2020 basically putting a halt to all but essential travel, and hotels, monuments, airlines, museums and restaurants trying to reinvent themselves, repurpose their spaces and their services, can the lessons of 2020 be used in 2021 to help build a concept of tourism that satisfies the traveler without being destructive to the planet and others?
All of a sudden the skies were emptied of airplanes, trains were running nearly empty, and everyone found themselves confined to their homes. The tourism industry essentially ground to a halt, and our own identity as travelers or tourists was transformed, shaken. Under house arrest, we rediscovered the nature around us and the wonders of proximity. And these long months should profoundly change how we travel in 2021 and beyond.
Even before the pandemic there were signs that change was needed in the travel industry. But instead of a gradual progression of growing awareness among tourists of the environmental impact of their practices after the "flygskam" movement and a progressive uptake in sustainable tourism by the industry, international tourism came to a standstill. The term "anthropause" -- referring to this period of significantly reduced human activity -- was coined largely in response to the unprecedented drop in travel and the resulting drop in carbon emissions. While our awareness of our impact as tourists, sometimes catastrophic, on environments and communities, may have been growing since the concept of "overtourism" made headlines in 2018, 2020 made it essentially impossible to not look our behaviors in the face and understand that they have a very direct effect on shaping our planet. Watching the outside world from the inside, through screens in our homes, reports of dolphins swimming in less polluted waters in Italy and near Istanbul may have been a temporary reason to cheer but also a call to reckoning in ourselves.
Scientists investigating the effects of this anthropause on ecosystems emphasize that with wildlife free and humans under lockdown, the relationship between people and nature is shifting. With nature a main draw for many travelers, this year we learned that wildlife observation isn't only associated with an exotic or faraway location or even changing one's environment. As we stayed at home, we started really looking at the nature around us. The birdwatching boom of 2020 grew out of convenience as birds can be found nearly anywhere, even in urban areas, but it also meant that many of us started to view our own, nearby environments differently. Bringing nature into our everyday routine meant we could approach these surroundings with new eyes, a key trait for developing our new travel practices.
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Leaving the skies for the birds
As for the airlines, planes remained grounded, like a symbolic vestige of our recent past. A desert parking lot in Alice Springs, Australia is the storage site of over a hundred planes requiring regular maintenance and has become a kind of curiosity in itself.
At the same time in Singapore, grounded planes were transformed into restaurants where customers could reserve the opportunity to eat a travel-style meal and experience what it's like to fly on Singapore Airlines Airbus's A380. And so marketing initiatives like this and the well-publicized flights to nowhere may have been designed to spark excitement about travel but, as a simulacrum of a trip, in fact, they resembled a kind of "tour" of our recent past. Postcards from another pre-covid time, or even another world.
Meanwhile a UK company specializing in "no-fly" holidays aims to respond to our evolving demands: "wanting to avoid crowded airports, holiday closer to home, experience nature and support local businesses."
As for hotels -- what can a hotel offer us now? In the new configuration of our everyday reality, hotels tried to launch special rates and offers for those who wanted to make it their temporary home office for a while, a home office located elsewhere for the hybrid nomads who want to work with a different view and take advantage of the amenities and the surroundings. A pragmatic reinvention and one that saw the blurring of the boundaries between home (office) and holiday residence.
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