Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
10
The Future of Slow Travel
Walton (2009, p783) argues that 'work in tourism studies tends to be present-
minded and instrumental in its approaches, schematic rather than grounded or
contextualized when gesturing towards the potential significance of change
over time'. Our ambitious aim has been to define slow travel from the outset
and to present a case as to how this might provide a new form of sustainable
tourism development in the future. In order to do this we began with an analy-
sis of the contextual issues and approaches to sustainable development and
tourism impact over the past decades. This was achieved through an explo-
ration of impacts at a local destination level and within a wider global context.
Even when examined at a destination level, tourism cannot be considered a
'green' industry, on several counts. More than this, there is clearly a contes-
tation of the notion that tourism is invariably a positive agent for change.
At a global level it is now recognized that the tourism sector makes a
significant contribution to GHG emissions and therefore climate change.
Analysis of tourism data illustrates the major role played by transport in
the use of finite resources and generation of tourism's share of GHG
emissions. Thus, it is the travel component that warrants further scrutiny.
International and national policy options are currently emerging that will help
to reshape tourism demand and provision in the future. The sector is respond-
ing, if rather slowly, to these challenges. Lane (2009, p19), for example,
comments:
… how the linear growth of tourism was first challenged by the
concept of sustainable tourism, how the challenge went largely
unheeded, and how only now, thirty years on, is the industry
beginning to fear the unsustainable future.
Should the tourism sector choose to ignore the issues being flagged up by
a succession of research studies and by policy-makers, and it has a relatively
