The travel, tourism and aviation sectors can no longer function in silos but instead to need to look at ways of working together. This was the message from Minister of Tourism, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, speaking at the World Economic Forum (WEF) Pre-Summit on Green and Shared Growth in Aviation, Travel and Tourism in Cape Town.
“The tourism component is characterised by a very large number of players operating in multiple market segments. Moreover, the tourism sector is dominated by small, medium and micro-sized enterprises, with a few big operators at the top of the pyramid mostly calling the shots. And while the larger global players are linked institutionally through industry bodies such as the WTTC, it remains a challenge to forge truly inclusive institutional links with the proliferation of smaller players throughout the remainder of the value chain,” said Van Schalkwyk.
“The aviation component, on the other hand, is dominated by a relatively small number of commercial airlines – and is well organised in Iata – but is fairly poorly linked to their tourism counterparts as well as the ‘new model’ airlines such as the low-cost carriers.”
The minister explained that vast increases in tourism arrivals over the past few decades had led to the tourism and aviation industries depending on one another, as well as global conditions for their prosperity. “Failure in one cluster has a massive impact on the system as whole,” said Van Schalkwyk, who cited examples such as the 2010 Icelandic volcano eruption and exchange rate volatility.
“To address these challenges, the travel and aviation industries need to find a way
to get multilateral institutions, global industry bodies and private corporations and governments to look beyond their partial views when they respond to climate change, trade negotiations, taxation and new security risks, and rather consolidate their respective inputs,” said Van Schalkwyk. “If we fail in this task over the next few years, we will fail in giving the aviation and tourism sector an opportunity to speak and act with the political weight it deserves as the creator of one in every ten jobs globally.
“Two particular challenges that we should address are social inclusion and climate change. We must create decent jobs – and in the process build more balanced societies that include women as fundamental drivers of economic growth. In responding to climate change, we also need to forge much stronger cross-industry and public-private partnerships.”
The minister suggested that the industry work together to consolidate these and other initiatives by working towards an ‘Aviation, Travel and Tourism Low Carbon Manifesto’, capturing the shared vision and roadmap for green growth up to 2050.
“We will have to work harder than ever to make ourselves heard; to make the world understand that the travel and tourism sector is an important vehicle to help achieve shared green growth,” he said.
