Scientific reflection

The article from Gössling and Higham (2021), starts with stating the current problems of touristic destinations. In fact, one of the biggest challenges in the tourism sector is to reduce the tourist carbon emissions. Scott, Hall, and Gössling (2019) also illustrate in their article that this big problem of the reduction of carbon emission has been ignored for several years from the stakeholders and undervalued.

According to UNTWO and Aviation Week (2019) the last decade, tourism was growing like never seen before. That is because the income and the opportunities to travel to Asia has been increased. In this big growth, China had a key role because the demand was significantly raising yearly, and a big percentage of the aircrafts have been delivered to China as well.

While tourism has given a lot in the positive sense to the economy of various countries, all this mass tourism has led to everyone being more vulnerable to external shocks.

Another major challenge for sustainable tourism are the platform economies that came into play in the tourism sector almost 15 years ago.

These platforms, in fact, such as the very famous Airbnb, have been able to considerably increase the number of beds available in a tourist destination. Unfortunately, the consequences of the platform are not really positive from an environmental point of view. This is because the increase of beds in any destination, be it the small village or the big metropolis, has contributed to the rise of mass tourism everywhere. This phenomenon can be unsustainable for the destination and the locals over the years.

It must be said that tourism is not just one source of pollution and emissions. There is much more behind the great growth in tourism over the past decade.

From my personal point of view, the reduction of emission from touristic destination is an imperative given for the future. it is already late to start thinking about how to reduce emissions in tourism. fortunately, however, there are destinations that have started earlier than others that currently have a competitive advantage.

Consumer demand is increasingly focused on sustainability. This means that if a destination makes a concrete commitment to sustainability, tourists in turn are more motivated to stay in a destination that is particularly active in this area.

As I have experienced Laax during the winter study tour, it was a great feeling to be able to be in a tourist destination without feeling too guilty about the climate and energy aspect. The sustainability of destinations will in future be one of the key criteria for consumers when choosing a tourist destination to visit. In addition, in my view, there will also be a change in the use of transport for tourism purposes in the future. For example, the train will become a mean of transport more popular again.

To sum up, the trend in tourism is changing and heading in an increasingly sustainable direction. The desire to go back to the roots is a pattern that is becoming increasingly common in tourism. As far as the practical directives of reducing emissions are concerned, there are several ways to arrive at the solution. If a tourist destination has no idea how to reduce energy consumption and decrease mass tourism, there are certainly other destinations that have pioneered in this regard. In my view, to make a destination sustainable, it is necessary to take a cue from destinations that have successfully achieved this goal and to take these examples as models.

References:

• Aviation Week. 2019. “Opinion: Is the Party over for Commercial Aviation?” https://aviationweek.com/commercial-aviation/ opinion-party-over-commercial-aviation (accessed November 13, 2019).

• Gössling, S., & Higham, J. (2021). The low-carbon imperative: Destination management under urgent climate change. Journal of Travel Research, 60(6), 1167-1179.

• Scott, D., C. M. Hall, and S. Gössling. (2019). “Global Tourism Vulnerability to Climate Change.” Annals of Tourism Research 77:49–61.

• UNWTO (United Nations World Tourism Organization). 2019. “International Tourism Highlights.” https://www.e-unwto.org/doi/pdf/10.18111/9789284421152.