Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
4
Slow Travel - the Ingredients
The challenge for tourism in the 21st century is seemingly how to reshape itself
so that people can continue to enjoy their leisure time, while, at the same time,
the supply sector manages to avoid the worst scenarios of climatic change.
One of the contributions of this topic is to define slow travel. This will pro-
vide a solid foundation on which to build knowledge and to develop
theory so as to take low-carbon tourism forward in the coming decades. The
ideal scenario would be to develop markets that have low impact and to
reduce high-impact tourism. Slow travel has a central role in this process of
change.
In Chapter 1 the concept of slow travel was summarized so that the reader
could achieve an initial grounding in the topic. It was also noted how we might
move to a new tourism system, based on three core principles: reduction of
tourism trips, development of low-carbon tourism and enrichment of the
tourist experience. This presents something of a challenge for the tourism sec-
tor, as previous performance indicates a lack of commitment and a 'business
as usual' mentality, regardless of the fine words contained in reams of policy
documentation. There are some exceptions, but the hundreds of thousands of
small- to medium-sized tourism businesses are decidedly slow to change. It is
likely that tourism suppliers will be forced to alter their patterns of trading in
light of a diminishing resource base and shifting market conditions, but will
this be too late?
There are signs that the market is already changing, perhaps slowly, but
nevertheless change is occurring. The pioneers in this diffusion process are
gaining some momentum in shaping slow travel. They are publicized in seri-
ous newspapers and on numerous web pages (see Table 4.1). These websites
illustrate the nature of the discussion. The authors invariably focus on one of
three core issues:
• the dilemma of avoiding flights and car use
