Travel industry’s hopes soar despite fears about overtourism

When the Covid pandemic and the subsequent cost of living crisis threatened to wipe out much of the travel industry, companies clung to one article of faith: people were desperate for a holiday and would spend what they could to get away again.

So it turned out. Only now, with business booming and demand hitting new highs, parts of the world wonder if people want to travel a little too much.

After a long, hot summer when local residents from the Canary Islands to Venice decided they had welcomed more than enough tourists, even Greece last month announced a new tax on visitors.

The €20 (£17) levy only hits cruise passengers landing in Mykonos and Santorini, where visitors outnumber local people in the whitewashed streets by more than 100 to one; but for a country highly reliant on international tourism, even such a selective tax felt significant.

Travel companies argue that the issues behind the collective headlines on overtourism are often specific and local. And Greece certainly continues to market for more tourists, albeit that it is trying to spread the love around: this week, it is hosting the UK travel industry’s leading event, Abta’s travel convention, in what is for Britons the relatively off-radar south-western Peloponnese.

Responsible, sustainable travel is on the convention agenda, although the established tourism industry – cruise lines apart – has not necessarily been the focus of protests or local ire.

The millions of UK customers who book trips with the likes of Tui or easyJet holidays, choosing resorts and existing hotels, appear less problematic than, say, the Airbnbs swallowing up local accommodation in Barcelona or Málaga – at least until their numbers prompt further development.

Nonetheless, more customers are paying increasing sums for their holidays, apparently undeterred by any local antipathy or heatwaves.

Companies are celebrating a third successive summer of growth – a marked difference from Abta’s first post-Covid summit abroad in 2022, billed by its chief executive, Mark Tanzer, as a “survivor’s celebration”. Indications are it has been a fruitful September too, with many holidaymakers – outside the captive market of families confined by school terms – seeking less intense sunshine.

Surveys find consumers express concern about both overtourism and the environment when asked – making sustainable travel a hot topic and a selling point for companies who offer alternatives. Yet on a macro level, it is not clear they are in any perceptible way voting with their feet. As one industry figure puts it: “Are they booking Scandinavia? Probably not.”

Figures from Iata, the global airlines body, show that demand for flying has intensified year on year, with at least 10% more passengers in the air this August than last and planes fuller than ever. And Abta’s own nascent “confidence index” is showing consumer sentiment around travel is higher compared with a year ago.

The clouds on the horizon this year include the long-delayed start of the EU’s entry-exit system (EES), due until recently to have launched a date that would have landed much of the British travel industry in a long queue for biometric registration at Kalamata airport.

The start of EES, requiring facial scans and fingerprinting of all visitors to Europe, is now officially slated for November but a further delay appears likely. The extra border formalities will be followed within a year by the European travel information and authorisation system – a €7 visa charge.

While the greater concern has been about the logistics and costs to remodel borders and avoid chaos, Abta’s index also noted that the biggest single factor for confident travel cited by customers is knowing their documents are in order. A recent Abta conference call on EES was attended en masse by members anxious to know more.

And the industry is also keen to address another post-Brexit border headache: the end of simple seasonal postings, seeing thousands of entry-level overseas jobs vanish; fewer than 4,000 UK nationals now work in tourism in the EU, 70% less than in 2017, with the youngest disproportionately affected.

Many of the executives meeting this week got their first job as a chalet host or resort rep, and hope successful UK-EU talks on a youth mobility scheme can restore that pathway for a new generation.