Travel Weekly Blog

So the dust has settled on Travel Rants vs the ABTA Travel Convention, which saw the popular consumer blog arguing that the event should be held in the UK.

Both Kevin at Travolution and I argued from the opposite position. What did I take from it all?

What I stand by

If you happily fly, and don't intend to stop, I fail to see what you gain from ABTA 'setting the example' of not flying.

Nor do I accept that flying to a travel event is morally worse than flying for leisure. Both do damage, neither is strictly speaking necessary; the fact that one is more fun is irrelevant.

We could push this point further: holidays account for a vast number of flights per year, while travel events account for a number so small it is almost negligible.

The important point is that both holidays and travel events suffer if confined solely to the UK.

What I think it comes down to

Based on the above, we are in this rather familiar position: we all derive benefits from flying, and don't want to give it up. But we accept that it does damage.

Where do we go from there?

We must talk about mitigating the effects of flying, and not demand the travel industry leads the way to a stay-at-home world none of us wants to live in.

In one of my comments I said, "leading by example means demonstrating that sustainable travel is possible." I think this points towards some common ground.

What I concede

Replying to a comment on this blog, I went further:

If the argument was whether these events could look for more innovative ways to mitigate their effects on the environment, I wouldn't have a problem with that.

It's the job of the industry to demonstrate that travel can be force for good, and you don't make that point by staying at home. However, I do think you could argue that the industry isn't making that point well enough.

And a pat on the back

My final reflection, and the nicest: I liked the way the debate on Travel Rants was conducted.

I always do - Darren's a good host - but this was a particularly hard-fought debate, and its politeness in the face of strong disagreements does Darren and his readership great credit.

Here's CNN reporting on the environmental campgainers who descended on the new terminal in a 'flashmob'.

Nice bit of agitprop (even if flashmobs are sooo 2006, daahling) but I think it was the least of BA/BAA's worries...

Nathan Midgley, web producer

The National Caravan Council has launched a new web site to promote the green credentials of caravan holidays. Hmmmm. I am not convinced, but I did visit the site - greencaravanning.com - and found that driving a large car and caravan from London to Malaga does compare favourably with alternative forms of transport in terms of emissions. However, my youth was spent on caravanning holidays so the thought of driving to Malaga at 50mph is not a good one.

Most of the caravans I see on the road tend to be pulled by gas guzzling 4x4s carrying two - usually older - people at most. How environmentally friendly is that?

Martin Couzins, online editor

Running through the cruise blogs I posted about yesterday, I found this story about Hapag-Lloyd Cruises's Hanseatic crossing the Northwest Passage.

That's the semi-mythical channel between Canada and the Arctic - once a holy grail for explorers, who knew it would allow shipping to travel from Europe to Asia without the treacherous slog round Africa.

It is navigable by icebreakers, and The Hanseatic is apparently one of few passengers ships able to make the journey (this is its seventh trip).

But all that could change. The ice that normally covers the Northwest Passage receded to an unprecedented extent this year:

Image: NASA Earth Observatory

(When will I get tired of free satellite images? Try never.)

This will be exciting news for armchair explorers, but rather less thrilling to the environmental lobby.

Nathan Midgley, web producer

In Travel Weekly August 24 our aviation reporter Ian Taylor penned an interesting analysis of public attitudes to the environment in light of a survey by Defra.

The survey of 3,600 adults found that people are prepared to pay to mitigate the environmental impact of flying, much as they are prepared to pay more for environmentally friendly products.

The challenge for the trade is to put offset options in front of consumers when they purchase the holiday. That way they can fly without guilt.

Isn't that called a win win situation? Do readers think they would offset their emissions if it was made part of the booking process?

Martin Couzins, online editor

I'm not aware that bike sharing is taking off in the UK - although car sharing is ... albeit slowly.

So, could boat sharing be the next big thing

Looks like our Dutch friends can’t stop sharing. What next after boats?

Martin Couzins, online editor

Travolution editor Kevin May tells a good tale from an event he attended last night. The government's tourism minister Shaun Woodward refused to provide details of his own carbon footprint despite asking Kev for his.

Makes a mockery of the government's insistence on us all keeping a hawk eye on our carbon footprint - especially in the week environment secretary David Miliband launched the government's carbon calculator.

Good work, Kev. Keep it up.

Greenpeace was out in force at London City, Manchester, Edinburgh and airports this morning, offering passengers the chance to trade in their evil, planet-throttling domestic flight (boo! hiss!) for a cuddly train ride (aaaawww).

Good to see the complicated matter of carbon emissions tackled with such subtlety - Qatar Airways and US Airways, who just put in orders for Airbus's new, more fuel efficient A350, should hang their heads in shame. What good will that do?

Anyway, marauding around a terminal in fancy dress puts the environmental group in uneasy company - back in January EasyJet did the same thing to protest air passenger duty rise.

There will be inevitable disagreement about which protest was the more noble, but one thing is clear: propagandists everywhere are realising that there's no audience more captive than a check-in queue...

Below Brian Hordon expresses amazement at the growth predicted for British tourism spend - a total of 40.6% over the next five years.

But of course it isn't just us Brits who are demanding more travel. Research by the World Travel and Tourism Council puts global growth at 4.3% a year for the next decade.

Great news for the industry, and as the Times travel supplement argued on Saturday tourism can foster both economic development and cultural understanding. (The paper is a partner of this year's Responsible Tourism Awards.)

Unfortunately there are downsides. Even if we forget carbon emissions for a moment, the 'economic development' can come at the cost of local ecosystems, and the 'cultural understanding' at the cost of local heritage and tradition.

In the same Times supplement Fiona Sims complains that we too often travel to far-flung places only to ignore local cuisine in favour of imported European-style grub; and this week the BBC will screen a film on tourism's troubling environmental impact on Hawaii.

It's timely, then, that WTTC's Global Travel and Tourism Summit (Lisbon, 10 - 12 May) will take the problems of growth as its theme, asking:

Is it really possible for the industry to bring useful change to people's lives, to their communities, and to global society? Can we identify where this has been achieved - or is the industry stronger on rhetoric than reality?

There's further reading and a chance to discuss the issues on the summit's web channel.

Naturally some of the big travel blogs had a reaction to the Tories' aviation tax proposals, and common to two of those reactions (Francisca Kellett at The Telegraph and Darren at Travelrants) was a social equality argument. Higher taxes, they both wrote, will price the poor out of the market, making air travel the preserve of the rich.

This is undoubtedly true, but I thought it raised a question. To what extent is air travel a right? The near-universal air travel we are used to is made possible by low-cost airlines, so what happens if the low-cost model stops being sustainable?

Chancellor Gordon Brown and his shadow George Osborne begin a head-to-head battle on environmental strategy today. This promises to be cold comfort to the aviation industry, goodwill towards which was not helped by this weekend's revelation that BMI is flying empty aircraft to keep a landing slot at Heathrow. (What would you have done in BMI's place? Just left a multi-million pound asset to slip away? You're *fired*.)

New Conservative proposals focus on domestic measures that seek to hit the biggest polluters hardest, particularly dirtier aircraft and frequent flyers. Given that most frequent flyers are businesspeople, this is - what's the kindest phrase? - a leap into the unknown for the Tories.

Predictably, airlines were quick to respond, condemning George Osborne's ideas as a 'blunt instrument', which is exactly what a Treasury minister said about air passenger duty back in February.

Also interesting was Tory rhetoric about not hitting those who take 'one package a year'. Would the ailing traditional package thrive with the emissions police on its side? Or would holidaymakers be put off by the thought of splurging the lion's share of their annual carbon allowance on a single trip? And what did short break operators think when they read it, I wonder?

There's a fairly funny, if not what you'd call balanced, spoof video from fictional pro-aviation growth organisation 'Spurt' doing the rounds...

Note the similarity between Spurt's slogan and that of a leading budget airline.

Apparently the people behind the vid (Airportwatch, Enough's Enough and Greenpeace) also took out full-page ads in the press earlier in the week, possibly in response to Ryanair's Greedy Gordon ones two weeks back.

So, a gutsy piece of satire or a vapid publicity stunt?

Nathan Midgley, Travelweekly.co.uk

Daily Telegraph travel news ed Charles Starmer-Smith has revealed details of an EasyJet APD protest - apparently the airline is to send staff to airports dressed as taxmen. How does this compare with Ryanair's print ads and flights-for-protest scheme? Over to the venerable broadsheet's travel blog, where Starmer-Smith isn't mincing words:

EasyJet’s band of brainstormers have come up with a lame fancy dress parade which will be about as effective as staging a nuclear power protest by wearing Green Peace pants...

Eek.

Nathan Midgley, Travelweekly.co.uk

Our post on Ryanair's Greedy Gordon ads has opened up a can of worms - Simon Robinson of the Big Biofuels blog weighed in with:

How can the considerable damage to the environment that flying causes and the incredibly low fares on offer, compared with similar trips by rail which has much smaller carbon footprint per passenger be justified? Come on travel industry how do you sleep at night...

TW reporter Ed Robertson replied:

It is worth putting aviation’s environmental damage in proportion with the rest of the UK’s carbon footprint. According to sustainable tourism charity the Travel Foundation, aviation accounts for 5.5% of the UK’s emissions, while the energy industry accounts for 35%, the UK’s car habit 20% and people’s homes 15%...

Head over to the post's comments section to read their arguments in full and - you know the drill - let us know what you think too.

I suggested yesterday that last night's BBC documentary Should I Give Up Flying? would be interesting viewing. Indeed it was. But my jaw hit the floor on two occasions:

1: A segment on rising sea levels consisted almost solely of a jaunt round Venice, presenting as local a threat whose greatest claim on our attention is that it is global.

2: At the end of an item on regional airport expansion Brian Blessed contested that Doncaster's Robin Hood Airport was a good thing because the land it stands on has long been used as an airstrip. Yes, it's circular logic, but it also makes the more fundamental mistake of being irrelevant.

There were, though, decent items on India and China's air travel markets and the race to produce greener aircraft and fuels. What's the verdict from readers?

Nathan Midgley, Travelweekly.co.uk

The normally coy Ryanair laid its cards on the table today with a series of large - full page, in some cases - ads in the national press attacking the Government's breathtakingly unpopular doubling of Air Passenger Duty. This comes the day after the budget airline announced it had one million free flights to give away to passengers who wrote to 'Greedy Gordon' and complained about the rise.

That's even cheaper than getting an unlimited quantity at two-for-one, which was the going rate last week after Ryanair's site apparently suffered a glitch.

Anyway, cop an eyeful of the Greedy Gordon ad in the Telegraph, Mail, Guardian and elsewhere.

In an unrelated matter, the highly-publicised documentary Should I Give Up Flying? airs on BBC2 tonight. Should be interesting viewing.

Nathan Midgley, Travelweekly.co.uk

Don’t let’s hear anyone in Government ever accuse the travel industry of failing to speak with one voice.

We’re dealing with an administration whose left hand does not know what its right is doing. We’ve had the Chancellor seeking environmental credit for doubling air passenger duty – a bogus claim that would only make the smallest sense if APD hit demand – while the Department for Transport asserts its support for expanding airports to meet a doubling of passenger numbers.

Then we have the environment minister – a Blairite to his boots – who hit out at airlines for not doing more to cut emissions, only to be slapped down by his own department.

At least the industry comprises competing interests – retailers and suppliers, multinationals and small businesses – a fact that explains the lack of agreement. What is the Government’s excuse?

If ministers believe the threat of climate change is serious, why no consistent message, let alone policy? The truth is the Government has no intention of curbing aviation growth. It merely wants increased revenue from the increasing numbers flying, while hoping to deflect green demands for action on climate change.

Ian Taylor, reporter

The travel industry needs to work harder at lobbying, according to a story that we recently carried on travelweekly.co.uk.

The Travel Weekly Blog can't help with that (at least not right now...) but here's a natty way of keeping up with travel-related speeches and debates in the Houses of Parliament.

Head to Theyworkforyou.com, a site which is designed to keep us in touch with what our MPs are up to. A noble enough goal in itself, but the site also features - here's the good bit - a keyword-driven email alert service.

That means you can sign up, register for keywords like 'travel' or 'tourism', and read what the Commons and the Lords are saying about the industry from the comfort of your inbox. It's free, and all you need to disclose is your email address.

We're going to sign up here and see how useful the service is, so look out for updates. If you try it too we'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

Nathan Midgley, travelweekly.co.uk

Someone in the industry remarked to me recently that talk of the environmental impact of air travel and tourism was just a fad.

Never mind the Stern Review, let’s hope to God they are right. It would be wonderful to find the threat of climate change had been exaggerated.

Tony Blair says the science is not in doubt, but after the Iraq war who can believe him? Unfortunately, the 2,000 leading climate scientists in the world, convened in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, say the same thing.

A handful of lobbyists, politicians and PR executives, many of them funded by oil giant ExxonMobil, oppose the idea and seek equal media air time. Don’t be misled next time you see the likes of former chancellor Nigel Lawson on TV arguing against the science of climate change. Your children and grandchildren will live with the consequences.

I recommend those not convinced read The Last Generation, the latest book by New Scientist writer Fred Pearce. If you can get find a copy of his 1989 book Turning up the Heat, so much the better. Its prediction of how climate change would unfold through the past decade has proved frighteningly accurate.

Either Pearce is a regular Nostradamus or the science was pretty well understood in the late 1980s. Since then, scientists have developed their understanding and fleshed out the detail, and the predictions of how far and fast temperatures will rise have pushed higher.

Those who deny climate change would have you believe the phenomenon is still the subject of dispute. It is not. The debate is about the rate of temperature rise, and the consequences, during the lifetimes of those now living.

But like those in the tobacco industry who spent five decades denying the link between cigarettes and cancer, these people will not go away – they even employ some of the same tobacco lobbyists. The rest of us just have to get past them.

Where does that leave travel? God knows we all need our world to be sustainable. But tourism needs sustainability too. No one in the industry would suggest it despoil a destination and then move on, like strip mining.

There is a circle to be squared in reconciling constant growth with sustainability, but sooner or later the costs of maintaining what we have – or dealing with the consequences – will have to be factored into profit and loss figures, as former World Bank chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern has concluded.

No company is going to commit commercial hara-kiri by cutting back a money-making business, so the industry will require regulation to ensure necessary adjustments impact equally on all.

But that would fly in the face of the deregulation that now dominates and require a global political U-turn of the kind that followed the Wall Street Crash or accompanied the build up and outbreak of World War Two.

Maybe deregulation will turn out to be the fad in the long term. What do you think?

Ian Taylor, aviation reporter

Busy couple of days here.

Last night we hosted a party in Central London to unveil the re-launched Travel Weekly magazine. Reaction has been overwhelmingly positive so far! [Lawrence Assock of Destination Care pictured]

Earlier today, Travel Weekly managing director Trevor Harding handed out copies of the new magazine here at Reed Business Information in Sutton.

All the frenetic activity of the past few months will continue next week at World Travel Market, where we will be out in force with a special stand at ExCel with our new TW Group colleagues, Travolution and Gazetteers Plus.

We will also have our famous WTM dailies, which will be circulated every single day of WTM.

Make sure you drop by to say hello during the course of the event, stand # 1700 in the South Hall.