Cheap, mass travel to far-flung places? Post-Covid tourism will be very different
- Travel will be more local and mindful amid growing awareness of the hazards and hassle of foreign travel, health and safety, and data and sustainability issues
- The air miles industry might not survive, with package tours and cruises unlikely to regain popularity
The International Monetary Fund tells me that in 1950 – the year of my birth – 25 million people worldwide indulged in the luxury and excitement of foreign travel.
My family and I, and all of my colleagues have been “beneficiaries” of this explosion, tasting cultures and countries that the six-year-old me, armed with bucket and spade on a bitterly windswept beach in Skegness, could never have imagined.
I was 18 before I got on a plane – not for an exotic family holiday, but to begin a year as a volunteer teacher in Peshawar in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province.
Back then, the idea of a quick and cheap long-weekend break in Prague, Turkey or the Caribbean, or to a university friend’s wedding in New Delhi, was unimaginable, not least because of six-day working weeks and annual holidays stretching to just a week. As this tourism revolution unfolded, travel was democratised – not just for Britain’s working classes, but also the once dirt-poor populations of China. Where would the brand-name stores of Bicester have been without Prada-shoppers from Beijing?
