Tomorrow’s Tourist – Scenarios and Trends
So, how do you look to the future? If your time horizon encompasses only 1 day in the past and 1 day in the future — then your perception of the future will be the same as your understanding of the present. If you cannot see beyond tomorrow, then you shall not have the ability to anticipate change, nor take relevant action in response. If your time horizon is only yesterday and you do not consider circumstances of long ago, then you cannot understand the cycle of events when they re-occur. This longer view is what Dr Ian Yeoman has done in his new book, Tomorrow’s Tourist using techniques such as trends analysis and scenario planning. (For more information on scenario planning, download a Scenario Planning Toolkit.
The key drivers that will shape the future of tourism are: Economic Well-being The phenomenal growth of world tourism over the last decades has been driven by the economic wealth of consumers. However, looking to the future ageing demographics, the present credit crunch and rising inflation will impinge upon disposal income and tourism spending. Sustainability and Scarcity of Resources As the emerging economies of the world transform themselves into developed economies through building transport infrastructure, industrialisation and the consumption of goods and services put a strain on the world’s resources. Characteristics of this critical uncertainty include countries scrambling for resources, securing a skilled labour supply, pursuing a sustainable lifestyle, using technologies to mitigate aircraft efficiency in the aviation industry. As a consequence, by 2030 skiing in the French Alps becomes rationed and scarce due to global warming, Dubai hosts the world’s first indoor winter Olympics, third generation synthetic bio fuels dominate air transport, if you don’t do business in a green way you are penalised, and the hydrogen economy has arrived. Technologies In the last five years we have seen more technological change than in the last 150 years, therefore it is difficult to imagine what the future will hold given the pace of change, whether it will be watching movies on your spectacles, nano-medicines curing cancers, genetically modified food solving the world food shortage or space travel. The book, Tomorrow’s Tourist, sets out to:
In 1950, 25 million consumers took an international holiday and by 2005 this figure had risen to 803 million. By 2030, it is forecasted that this figure will reach 1.9 billion international arrivals, spending USD 2 trillion with USD 5 billion being spent by international tourists every day across the world, from USD 2 billion in Europe to USD 1.5 billion in Asia. Data for this article are provided by the Future Foundation, one of the worlds leading consumer think tanks. * * * Ian Yeoman is a futurologist specialising in travel and tourism, having learned his trade as the scenario planner for VisitScotland, where he established the process of futures thinking within the organisation using a variety of techniques including economic modelling, trends analysis and scenario construction. In May 2008, Ian will be taking up a position as Associate Professor of Tourism Management at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. |
In January 2006 Stephen Ladyman, UK Minister for Transport, said: ‘We can either stumble into the future and hope it turns out alright or we can try and shape it. To shape it, the first step is to work out what it might look like.’
Scenario planning is the capability of organisations to understand their business environment, to think through what this means to them and then to act upon this new knowledge. Scenarios are a range of pictures and stories of the future that are constructed using drivers and trends that shape the future. Scenarios provide alternative views of the future. They identify some significant events, main actors and their motivations, and they convey how the world functions. On a practical level, it is just about crystal ball gazing and estimating the future, whereas trend analysis is an examination of the causes, speed of developments and the impact they may have.
By 2030, China will be the world’s largest tourism destination, holidays in Outer Space will be the ultimate luxury experience, extreme Swedish ironing will be an Olympic Sport, embedded technologies will be the norm in future tourists, and skiing in the Alps will be no more.