This was published 8 years ago
The future of tourism: Why the best time to travel is right now
By Lee Tulloch
The footprint of millions may mean that attractions such as the Angkor Wat temple become less accessible.Credit: Getty Images
A week or so ago I was chatting with a travel industry professional who is absolutely convinced we've reached "peak" travel. That now is the best time there has ever been to travel, and it will only go downhill from here.
He might have said, "There's never been a more exciting time to be a traveller", to paraphrase our prime minister.
My colleague was referring to the relatively low cost of flights, held down recently by a decrease in the cost of fuel, despite the price wars between our domestic airlines being abandoned.
He was talking about the improved ease of flying, of cruising, of train travel, and the multitude of options available to people on all kinds of budgets. Once only the very wealthy could afford to cross continents, but now cheap overseas holidays mean they are not beyond the reach of low and middle-income families, or the vastly numerous merging middle classes from countries such as India and China.
But he fears this situation will be reversed. The footprint of millions of tourists on places like Angkor Wat or the Champ de Mars in Paris will mean that, increasingly, the world's iconic destinations will be reserved only for the very rich.
We are starting to see this. Luxury hotels and resorts and high-end tours are offering their guests, for a cost, experiences not available to the hoi polloi: a private dinner on a tourist-free fragment of China's Great Wall or a champagne breakfast at Ta Prohm.
See: The 10 most extraordinary hotel experiences you'll never forget
We don't know what's going to happen to fuel but reaching the peak now, we have to imagine a time when there are fewer flights and they are far more costly. The effect on the environment of the big cruise ships is starting to restrict their access to places such as Venice. Ships can still visit most ports, but what happens when custodians of fragile environments such as the Arctic and Antarctic or the Galapagos say "enough"?
That's not considering the possibility that many ports might be affected by rising sea levels or that deserts become unnavigable because of soil erosion and intense heat. Or that the movement of huge groups of people fleeing climate change will affect and limit the movement of people travelling for leisure.
Right now, none of this really enters travellers' minds when they're booking a holiday. After all, the current options are many and tantalising: a beach holiday in Fiji? Sailing through the fiords of Norway? A river cruise in Myanmar? Carnival in Rio?
This February saw such an unprecedented spike in the global temperatures of the planet – a whopping 1.35 degrees above the norm – that climate scientists deemed it "quite stunning" and a "climate emergency".
Global warming is going to stuff up our travels. It will stuff up a lot more than that, but for the meantime it's worth considering how our options might narrow in 10 or 20 years, certainly in 50 if nothing is done now to halt or slow its progress.
There will be more cyclones like Winston that devastated Fiji recently. More storms mean more flight delays and more in-flight turbulence. The small Pacific islands that are our playground will disappear under rising sea levels.
The snow cover in alpine areas will decrease, seriously affecting ski resorts. Reef bleaching, such as that happening to our own Barrier Reef, will be widespread, making the reefs less attractive to tourists. National parks will close because of fire risks.
Deforestation, desertification and water scarcity will make environments less hospitable and increase the risk of outbreaks and epidemics of serious diseases. We're already seeing this with the Zika virus, which can be transported from continent to continent through the infected hopping on airplanes. It requires other conditions to survive, as does dengue and yellow fever, but an outbreak in northern Australia is imaginable.
See: What travellers need to know about the Zika virus
The next world pandemic has long frightened scientists because the ease of international travel may spread it without border authorities being able to do much, other than heavily restrict those entering their country.
Normally I would now say that I don't mean to be alarmist but, actually, I am alarmed, as we all should be, not just travellers but all citizens of the world.
Maybe we have reached peak travel. Go where you want to go now, before it's gone. But that's not enough. We travellers need to pressure our governments to stop it going.
Sign up for the Traveller Deals newsletter
Get exclusive travel deals delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up now.