4.4 Current Trends
Meagan A. McGuire
The travel trade industry is constantly evolving based on societal change. The current evolution includes increasingly personalized consumer travel, global sustainability issues, and rapid advancement in technology (IT-Online, 2023).
As discussed previously, the traveling public is looking for unique and experiential travel, which often require assistance to arrange. Many leisure travel agents emphasize their consulting services and focus more and more on becoming experts in niche travel. Tour operators, as well, are specializing in particular audience market segments, types of travel, and travel destinations. By differentiating themselves from simple booking agents, retail travel trade businesses are providing something OTAs cannot—namely, an understanding of specific types of travel and lifestyles that allow customers to explain their travel needs and trust an advisor to fulfill them. This need is exemplified today with social emphasis on identity pride, especially with Black and LGBTQIA+ people. For example, Up in the Air Life, a tour operator specializing in black travel, promises Black travelers that “founder and CEO, Claire Soares, built a multimillion-dollar boutique travel agency to create space for you to let your guard down and travel with confidence amongst other like-minded Black people” (n.d., para. 58).
Corporations and individual travelers are increasingly making buying decisions based on the urgent challenge of climate change. Business travel, especially, is affected by this initiative. In fact, 92% of respondents to a 2023 Global Business Travel Association Foundation survey said that sustainability is a priority for their organization. Companies are driven to focus on sustainable travel practices in order to manage their own reputations and in response to genuine concern for the environment. Eighty-one percent of corporate travel planners have integrated or plan to integrate environmental sustainability into their travel programs. Travel managers are using their purchasing power to leverage change from their suppliers, with 63% of managers basing their buying decisions on sustainability criteria (GBTA Foundation, 2023).
The United Nations (n.d.) has reported that global carbon emissions need to be halved by 2030 in order to stay on track to reach net zero emissions by 2050 in accordance with the Paris Agreement, which was adopted in 2015 with the goal of keeping global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees centigrade. However, the growing population, affordable travel options, and increase in travel accessibility means that tourism is expected to almost double in size by 2050 (Peeters & Papp, 2023). Tourism’s direct emissions alone (not including indirect emissions from things like laundry service, food production, etc.) accounts for around 5% of global CO2 emissions. As detailed in the Travel Foundation report (Peeters & Papp, 2023), individual governments are taking action by:
- banning short