Have been pondering on a couple of the points made by Justin Francis, CEO of www.responsibletravel.com, at a recent evening seminar for ICRT students and alumni. He was talking about the 10 things that will change tourism, for good or for the worse, in the coming years and two of his 'top ten' were the Arab Spring and the economic crisis facing the PIGS. It is clear, even from the events in Tahrir Square and in Sirte last night, that the repercussions of the Arab Spring are still being worked out across the MENA region and it will be some time before destinations like Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia see their visitor numbers returning to anything like 2010 levels. Meanwhile, what will be the impact on destination marketing and management budgets of government cuts in Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal as they struggle to bring their budget deficits under control?
I am a geographer by academic background and what really interests me about this situation around the Mediterranean is what impact there will be on tourism flows? Will there be a major increase in outbound tourism to Turkey as Europeans continue to search for their two weeks of sunshine? Or will the emerging destination of the Azores take up some of the demand diverted away from the MENA region in particular? And where will Morocco go? It gets a lot of business from Spain but with a major recession there, it may see numbers fall. Yet it too has experienced some unrest and analysts believe that it too may still see changes. And what the tourism sector needs is certainty, not uncertainty.
So - it is going to be an interested few months and we should watch the early UNWTO returns for 2011 with a lot of interest, to see who really has benefited from these major changes happening around the Med. One thing we know for sure though, is that the residents of these countries will feel these changes far more than we ever will.
I am a geographer by academic background and what really interests me about this situation around the Mediterranean is what impact there will be on tourism flows? Will there be a major increase in outbound tourism to Turkey as Europeans continue to search for their two weeks of sunshine? Or will the emerging destination of the Azores take up some of the demand diverted away from the MENA region in particular? And where will Morocco go? It gets a lot of business from Spain but with a major recession there, it may see numbers fall. Yet it too has experienced some unrest and analysts believe that it too may still see changes. And what the tourism sector needs is certainty, not uncertainty.
So - it is going to be an interested few months and we should watch the early UNWTO returns for 2011 with a lot of interest, to see who really has benefited from these major changes happening around the Med. One thing we know for sure though, is that the residents of these countries will feel these changes far more than we ever will.
