I used this example when I was teaching the social anthropology of tourism at Greenwich University. One of my students recounted how she and her husband had driven a few minutes down the road to their local town for lunch. Finding all the restaurants, cafés and bars on the main street full, they walked 100 metres up a side street. As they entered the bar, it fell silent. They realised that they too were unwelcome, would not be served and left.

There are more extreme cases of the same phenomenon. Social anthropologists describe the difference between the public “front stage” and the more private “backstage”, culturally private rather than necessarily legally private. There had been growing disquiet about overtourism for a while before an incident in the fishers’ neighbourhood of La Barceloneta sparked demonstrations and overtourism became a prominent political issue in Barcelona.

“Here tourists do whatever they want,” Vicens Forner told El País. A local photographer, he was the one snapping photos of the Italian tourists as they wandered his neighbourhood for three hours in the nude, even popping into a local shop, while horrified residents looked on.

Fifty years ago, Doxey published his Irritation Index, the Irridex, which recognised that local residents often initially experience euphoria at living in a place worthy of visiting, followed by apathy, annoyance and then antagonism. Of course, local people will move along the Irridex curve at different rates, but as the current issues around overtourism have demonstrated, the negative impacts can be cumulative.

We talk about mass tourism in the same way that we talk about traffic. The “mass” and “traffic” are, of course, other people. We forget that we are as much part of the traffic and the mass as all the others on the motorway or in the Louvre. The tourists and the locals are heterogeneous, and our antagonism is caused, in part, by the behaviour of tourists and day excursionists. As part of tackling overtourism, local authorities are increasingly seeking to regulate visitor behaviour and encourage visitors to show respect for the place and its people, in other words, to behave as guests.

Spreading tourism can spread the problem

One response to overtourism has been to spread tourists temporally or spatially. The downside of this approach is that you may simply expand the area impacted by overtourism and visitors invade the “backstage” and deny locals an “off season”, an often vital breathing space for a more normal life.

Tiny Tourism is emerging as an alternative way to travel described by Laura Hall as the “counter-trend snubs overcrowded hotspots and “bucket lists” in favour of seeking out small, hyper-local experiences. The principle boils down to one little rule: if it feels like a tourist would do it, don’t.”

Two problems arise. First this is most likely an additional activity if you are in Barcelona you are still likely to visit the Sagrada Familia to get your trophy selfie. Worse you will want your selfie in the supermarket. If you don’t recognize the issue ask Mrs Google for a “selfie in the supermarket.”

I, for one, don’t want visitors lining up their “perfect shot” while I am shopping and I don’t want to see tourists invading the privacy of my neighbours poking their cameras into their windows. Some Bibury residents claim that “… oblivious pic hunters have also knocked down walls in their cars, blocked their driveways and several of the endless stream of coaches even run people over.” In August last year, The Sun carried a series of photographs with a report about this invasion of the backstage.

‘Tiny Tourism’ is no antidote to mass tourism, rather it spreads the impact backstage likely increasing irritation and antagonism.

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What if we returned instead?

There is an alternative. I am a repeat visitor to Ludlow for the Food and Drink Festival. We have been every year but five over the last twenty-five years. We now ‘know’ people there; we have become temporary residents.

Annabel Grossman has written about her repeat visits to a corner of Wales, where she has travelled 35 times. Despite Pembrokeshire being relatively close to her home in London, she returns to do much the same things each time: swimming at the same beach, running the same coastal paths, visiting the same coves, climbing the same mountain, eating at the same pubs and kayaking along the same stretch of coastline. For her, this familiarity and repetition have become a form of rest and relaxation.

As Jeff Bogle writes, this is a trend “According to Priceline’s 2026 Where to Next? report, 73% of travellers surveyed said that they are drawn back to the places and experiences that shaped them, from family beaches to amusement parks. Hilton’s latest global travel report echoes the trend: 58% of travellers with children plan to revisit destinations from their own childhood, while 52% of Brazilian travellers return to the same destinations year after year.”

Perhaps there is something important here for the overtourism debate. Rather than constantly seeking somewhere new and pushing tourism further into the “backstage”, there is value in returning to places we already know. We may become repeat visitors or even temporary residents, but we remain guests, and good guests respect the places where people live.

L’article When tourism invades the backstage, overtourism becomes a bigger problem est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.

Who benefits from the gazetting of land for protection? Obviously, the wildlife and its habitat and tourists who travel to the national parks and reserves. Others are disadvantaged. The ecotourism slogan, “leave only footprints, take only photographs”, reveals the problem. The gazetting of land to conserve wildlife generally requires the removal and exclusion of those who previously lived in or had access to the reserve area for grazing, fodder, thatching grass, honey, fishing and meat.

People in the buffer zone pay the cost of conservation and suffer raids on their crops by wildlife. The IUCN defines ‘human-wildlife conflict’, the ‘struggles that emerge when the presence or behaviour of wildlife poses an actual or perceived, direct and recurring threat to human interests or needs, leading to disagreements between groups of people and negative impacts on people and/or wildlife’. According to the IUCN, human-wildlife conflict is becoming more frequent, widespread, and serious.

“Every year, hundreds of humans and thousands of animals die due to human-wildlife conflicts. Habitat loss and, in some instances, conservation successes, combined with an ever-increasing human population, have resulted in humans and wild animals living in closer proximity and sharing the same scarce resources. The conservation of animals is an important global good, but the reality is that those living with wildlife usually carry the cost associated with this conservation imperative, including loss of income, essential crops to support their livelihoods, and tragically sometimes also loss of human life.”  CITES 2023

This issue is rarely addressed. The managers of protected land generally seek to maximise tourism revenues, although there are exceptions, while local communities in the buffer zones see the tourists as they pass through. We shall be exploring the challenge of enabling local communities to benefit from nature-based tourism at WTM Africa in April, the second of three panels discussing the Wildlife Economy in Africa, the White Paper discussed last year along with a report of the panel discussion can be found online. In the 2027 Responsible Tourism Awards, we are looking for tourism businesses, conservation organisations which are making a real contribution to the livelihoods of local communities in and around wildlife and nature destinations.

In too many buffer zones around, protected areas globally not only do the communities bear the cost of living with often dangerous wildlife they also never see what the tourists come to see. Since Responsible Travel launched Trip for a Trip nine years ago they have funded 9,000 trips providing enriching experiences for children in countries from Laos to Pakistan, India, Uganda, Zimbabwe, the UK and beyond.

Their first Trip for a Trip was in Eswatini, where children from the local Neighbourhood Care Points (NCPs) visited Mlilwane Wildlife Sanctuary to see zebras, crocodiles and hippos for the first time. Responsible Travel believes that “travel can open up horizons, broaden perspectives and ultimately be an unforgettably enjoyable experience. We believe in one for one – for every trip you go on, a child also benefits from a day trip.” More than three quarters of their travellers choose it as their booking

This is not just an issue in Africa. As Tim points out, Brighton draws in around 12 million tourists a year, but not all children living there get to experience its attractions, its coastline, the pebble beach or the rolling South Downs. You don’t have to travel with Responsible Travel to fund a Trip for a Trip.

This is a great way of enabling your clients to do good. Think about it.

L’article Nature tourism: Who benefits and who bears the cost? est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.

Long overshadowed by its neighbours, the country is now building a tourism machine of its own. The numbers back it up: more than 42 million visitors in 2025, up over 11% year-on-year, with momentum carrying into 2026, including17.5 million arrivals in the first five months alone. The government’s Visit Malaysia 2026 campaign has set its sights higher still, targeting 47 million.

But the real story here isn’t the headline number. Kuala Lumpur is trying to turn tourism into something bigger: a magnet for foreign investment, a soft-power tool, and a strategic bridge linking ASEAN to China, India and the Gulf.

No single star, but a deep bench

Malaysia doesn’t have one marquee destination the way Thailand has its beaches or Bali has its brand, and that may be more of a strength than a weakness. Kuala Lumpur delivers shopping and business travel. Langkawi covers beach resorts. Penang trades on food and heritage. Sabah and Sarawak offer high-value nature and diving tourism. Add medical tourism, Muslim-friendly travel, weddings and golf, and the portfolio looks less like a gap and more like a hedge.

Economies over-reliant on a single market or traveller type are exposed to shocks. Malaysia is spreading its bets.

Beijing comes back online

China is driving the first wave of the resurgence. Roughly 4.7 million Chinese tourists visited Malaysia in 2025, a jump of about 25%. That pace held into the first quarter of 2026, with arrivals near 1.4 million.

That’s not an accident. Malaysia has eased visa friction while expanding air links in parallel. As of May 2026, the two countries were connected by roughly 744 weekly flights and nearly 149,000 seats. The logic is simple: visa access generates demand, but demand goes nowhere without airline capacity to match it. Malaysia is building access, connectivity and demand all at once.

India: the long game

If China defined the last decade of Asian outbound travel, India may define the next one. Malaysia drew about 1.5 million Indian visitors in 2025, up 14.6%, with more than 600,000 arriving in the first five months of 2026 alone.

Dubai wants this traveller. So do Thailand, Singapore, Saudi Arabia and much of Europe. Malaysia’s pitch: proximity, competitive pricing, widespread English, familiar food, and infrastructure built for families.

The Singapore effect and the ASEAN hinterland

Geography is the one advantage no marketing budget can replicate. Malaysia logged roughly 21.1 million visitors from Singapore in 2025, up nearly 12%, though much of that reflects same-day “excursionists” rather than overnight tourists, a distinction built into Malaysia’s own visitor methodology. Short-stay traffic still spends on food, shopping and transport, and it matters.

More broadly, ASEAN markets accounted for almost 72% of Malaysia’s inbound traffic in the first five months of 2026. Much like Europe has long leaned on intra-regional travel, Malaysia is cultivating its own version of a captive regional market.

Tourism as an economic backbone

International visitor spending hit roughly RM106.8 billion in 2024, with the sector’s total economic contribution reaching RM291.9 billion, about 15.1% of GDP. Add RM121.3 billion in domestic tourism spending in 2025, and a three-layer demand structure emerges: long-haul international, regional ASEAN, and domestic. That layering makes the sector more resilient to shocks in any single segment.

Have you explored this slice of nature in the heart of the city?

KL Forest Eco Park, Kuala Lumpur
8:00 AM – 4:30 PM
Adults: RM10 | Kids & Seniors: RM1#VisitMalaysia2026 #MalaysiaTrulyAsia #CutiCutiMalaysia #SurrealExperiences #KLForestEcoPark #KualaLumpur pic.twitter.com/SCJeaZ2Kq2

— Malaysia Truly Asia (@TourismMalaysia) February 13, 2025

The harder challenge now is value per visitor, not visitor count. Medical tourism is the clearest proof point. Roughly 1.85 million health-related visitors in 2025 generated about RM3.35 billion in revenue, turning hospital care into something closer to an export industry. The same economics apply to conferences, luxury travel, weddings and golf.

The capital has the raw ingredients: a major international airport, world-class hotels, strong dining and retail, and connections spanning Asia and the Middle East. What it still lacks is a clear identity. Bangkok became a lifestyle destination. Singapore became a premium urban hub. Dubai turned layovers into an economic model. Kuala Lumpur remains harder to define, a gap that’s also an opportunity if it can convert transit passengers into stopover tourists and win more conferences and premium hospitality business.

The Gulf’s double role

Malaysia is one of Asia’s easiest large destinations for Muslim travellers. Halal food is everywhere, prayer facilities are standard, hotels understand the market, and English is widely spoken. But the bigger prize may not be tourists at all. As Gulf capital moves aggressively into global hospitality and destination development, Malaysia is positioning itself as a target for that investment, not just for Gulf travellers themselves.

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The question after 2026

Once the campaign wraps, the real scorecard begins: Did visitors stay longer? Did average spending rise? Did foreign investment follow? Did destinations beyond Kuala Lumpur actually benefit? And did Malaysia manage to shift from competing on affordability to competing on value?

Thailand isn’t going anywhere. Singapore will keep pulling high-spending travellers. Bali will keep its brand. Vietnam is growing fast. But Malaysia has quietly assembled the assets to compete at the top tier: infrastructure, geography, a deep ASEAN catchment, strong access to China and India, cultural fit with the Muslim world, and a sizable domestic base to fall back on.

“Malaysia Truly Asia” was one of global tourism’s most recognisable slogans for years. The next test is harder: converting scale into spending, visitors into investment, and growth into lasting economic leverage. Pull that off, and Malaysia’s rise stops looking like a post-pandemic rebound and starts looking like a redrawn map of Southeast Asian tourism.

L’article Malaysia’s quiet bid to become Southeast Asia’s tourism power  est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.

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The area attracts the rich and famous.

The area also attracts millions of tourists and day trippers, including domestic day trippers from the Midlands and international visitors looking for a day out in the country from London. The Cotswolds are recognised as ‘one of England’s long-established and world-renowned “attract” brands’, and in 2014 recorded 100% visitor satisfaction. With visitors arriving by car, coach and rail, many of them day trippers or visiting friends and relatives (VFR), it is difficult to obtain reliable estimates of visitor numbers across a landscape surrounded by cities and composed of villages and small towns.

The best data available are from 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic. The Cotswolds Tourism Destination Management Plan 2022–25 reports 2.4 million domestic tourists spending at least one night, while overseas visitors spent approximately €221 million (£189 million) on 371,500 trips, alongside 23 million day trips. Despite the high visibility of visitors in the honeypots, tourism in the Cotswolds supported only 31,000 jobs, representing 8% of the total.

Villagers may have Parish Councils, but these bodies have limited powers to address overtourism and generally have toseek action from higher authorities.

Bibury, with 600 residents, attracts up to 50 coaches daily and 20,000 weekend visitors. Gloucestershire County Council (GCC) significantly increased parking enforcement in the village, which has been experiencing a “nightmare”, issuing 651 penalty charge notices in 2025, a sharp rise from 28 in 2019. The fines generated approximately €53,000 (£45,570), not enough to cover the approximately €4,700 (£4,000) monthly cost of enforcement. Pay and display parking will be introduced for 24 on-street spaces, projected to generate up to approximately €256,000 (£218,880) annually. The fines accrue to GCC and may or may not be invested in managing overtourism in Bibury. GCC is developing a broader traffic management scheme.

Local government can cease marketing villages suffering from overtourism, but influencers on social media are now driving much of the demand.

Bourton-on-the-Water’s beautiful river attracts millions of tourists in the hot weather (Charlotte Joynes)

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Residents describe Bourton-on-the-Water, population 4,000, as “Blackpool-on-the-Water” due to the sheer volume of visitors, estimated at 5,000–10,000 daily. Day trippers bring their own picnics, although they may purchase ice cream. Residents’ concerns include tourists using hedges as toilets, leaving litter, damaging property, and coaches illegally parking in residential areas. In a recent survey of 202 residents, 94.6% said they felt visitor numbers were excessive. Charlotte Joynes, chair of Bourton Residents Voice, explains: “We would like enforcement,” says Joynes. “The coaches coming in are doing it illegally because of traffic regulations. But we don’t have police to stop them. We want people to visit but respect where they’re coming to.”

The tensions in Bourton-on-the-Water also raise a broader question: to what extent should residents of popular destinations be able to demand restrictions on visitors? The debate is particularly sensitive in picturesque villages where high property prices and second-home ownership can create perceptions that measures against overtourism are designed to protect privileged residents rather than local communities.

That argument emerged strongly among readers responding to The Independent’s coverage of the situation in Bourton-on-the-Water. One reader, Isthatso, questioned whether people who choose to live in one of the country’s most beautiful and expensive villages should expect protection from large numbers of visitors:

“Sorry, if you choose, and can afford, to live in one of the most beautiful villages in the country then you must expect a lot of tourists. What do these privileged residents want – government intervention to protect their peaceful lifestyle from interference by the common herd? If they don’t like it they can move, like anyone else who doesn’t like where they live. With prices in that village, they’ll have choices if they sell up. It’s no different to people who buy a house next to a long-established pub then complain about the noise. I’m sick of wealthy, privileged people complaining that they need exclusive access to everything that is good.”

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Another reader, Nigel Fromage, similarly argued that popular beauty spots should not become accessible primarily to those wealthy enough to live there:

“Sheer unadulterated snobbery. Firstly, what is wrong with Blackpool? It’s a brilliant destination suitable for all families, especially if you’re on a limited budget. Secondly, how many of the ‘residents’ in Bourton are genuine locals? Many of them are rich newcomers who buy up the expensive, picturesque cottages, forcing young people and locals out of the area – and then have the audacity to complain about the crowds spoiling their personal space. I’ve been visiting Bourton since I was a child, and yes, it has become more crowded in recent years, but why should the beautiful places in Britain become the domain of the rich?”

These reactions highlight one of the difficulties of tackling overtourism in villages: measures intended to protect residents and local infrastructure can also be perceived as attempts to restrict public access to places that belong to everyone.

Managing day trippers is particularly challenging, and exceptionally so where there is attractive public space for picnicking beside a stream, as there is in Bourton-on-the-Water. Enforcement is expensive. Restricting vehicle access and providing parking some distance from the village may therefore be among the only effective ways of reducing the pressures of overtourism.

L’article Overtourism is a bigger problem in villages est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.

In today’s attention economy, a world-class football club isn’t just a sporting institution. It’s one of the most powerful tourism marketing platforms a city can have, yet most policymakers still aren’t treating it that way.

The numbers don’t lie. VisitBritain found that 1.5 million international visitors attended a football match while touring the UK in 2019, contributing £1.4 billion to the visitor economy, up 84% since 2011. Football tourists spent an average of £909 per trip, 31% more than the typical international visitor, and stayed longer too.

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Manchester is the proof of concept. Every United or City match broadcast beams the city’s image to every continent, with zero additional marketing spend. Old Trafford alone attracted roughly 226,000 international visitors in 2019, generating an estimated £225 million in tourism revenue. Few conventional advertising campaigns can offer that kind of exposure.

Now scale that logic to Trabzon. Imagine a global icon like Mohamed Salah in a Trabzonspor shirt. With over 100 million followers across social platforms, Salah isn’t just a player; he’s a brand with its own gravitational pull. His arrival alone could put Trabzon on the radar for millions of fans across the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and Asia. Airlines could fill more seats. Hotels could fill more rooms. Restaurants could welcome more customers. And the city’s international profile could grow in ways that would be difficult for a tourism board to replicate on its own.

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For a destination already sitting on a stunning Black Sea coastline, with a rich history and a cuisine worth travelling for, football could be the missing catalyst, the thing that turns Trabzon from a seasonal regional draw into a year-round international destination.

The takeaway for policymakers is blunt. Stop budgeting football as a sporting line item. Start treating it as an investment in destination branding, economic development and international competitiveness. Cities are already competing hard for global attention. The ones that win will be the ones who grasp a simple truth: sometimes the most effective tourism campaign runs for 90 minutes, on a pitch.

L’article Why football could be one of the smartest tourism investments for cities est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.

And yet the research shows that tourism-based aviation is growing rapidly and we are not acting to achieve the required technological change.  The prospects for the adoption of alternative fuels with zero or very low greenhouse gas emissions are unlikely before 2050, as insufficient investment is being made in the development of new technology. Planes being constructed and purchased now will still be operational in forty years’ time. Given developments in other sectors and without further intense remedial action, aviation’s share of global emissions is projected to rise to about 20% of the global total by 2050, with some sources indicating significantly higher proportions.

Primo Levi echoed Hillel the Elder in his 1986 novel asking, “If not now, when?” For sure, the longer we leave mitigation and adaptation, the harder it will be. Mitigation is difficult because if I act to cut my greenhouse gas emissions, I bear the cost while others will go on with business as usual and profit from my efforts. As Garrett Hardin pointed out in 1968 in “The Tragedy of the Commons”, “Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.”

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Adaptation is a different matter; it may be difficult and expensive, but the benefit accrues to those who adapt. Adapt or die. In the spirit of Darwin, “the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment.” Primo Levi’s question is to the point: “If not now, when?”

I wrote last week about wildfires, the damage to infrastructure and the environment, and the lost revenue. There has been very limited research revealing the costs of climate change to the tourism industry in destinations and in the source markets.

Since the beginning of the year, there have been 1407 fires across Europe, with 434,796 hectares burnt, close to 100,000 more than in 2025,17.98 million tonnes (Mt) of CO₂ have been emitted since the start of the year, further accelerating climate change. The Europe Wildfire Map reveals wildfires across the continent, no longer dominating the headlines, the new normal. In Italy, all 27 major cities are on red alert; prolonged spells of extreme heat are expected to pose a health risk to the entire population, raising the likelihood of heat-related emergencies rather than solely affecting vulnerable groups.

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The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) reports that it “is likely that 2026 could see the highest number of heat-associated deaths on record”. An estimated 753 deaths were associated with the heatwave in May, with a further 2,124 deaths linked to the heatwave in June. The total of 2,877 deaths is almost double the 1,504 across the UK heatwaves in June to August last year.

I am grateful to travel writer Shivya Nath, whose “work focuses on the intersection of meaningful travel, climate action and social impact”, for this list of cities. Read her posts about travel and life on a changing planet; she takes her readers “to a different corner of the globe, on a journey rooted in conscious travel, community resilience and climate action.”

In this year’s Responsible Tourism Awards, we sought applications from those actively taking measures to reduce the risks posed by climate change and/or destinations working to create more climate change resilience in the travel and tourism sector. While there have been a few worthy winners, the response has been disappointing; for example, the judges were unable to make an award in Africa.

Places adapting to climate change

Source: Shivya Nath

If you know of initiatives to increase resilience to climate change and adapt to face the growing crisis in Europe or further afield, please let us know; we need good practices to adopt.

L’article Adapting to climate change: if not now, when? est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.

The real measure of success, however, will be whether Google’s compliance measures create a search environment where small hospitality businesses, including hotels, restaurants and cafés, can compete fairly for consumers’ attention. Compliance should not only eliminate Google’s own self-preferencing practices; it must also ensure that the new Search experience provides fair visibility to businesses and does not unintentionally strengthen other powerful online intermediaries.

That distinction matters

Small hospitality operators have become increasingly dependent on digital intermediaries to reach customers. It is no coincidence that two of the most important digital platforms used by the hospitality sector have been designated as gatekeepers under the DMA.

The Commission rightly concluded that Google continued to favour its own specialised services in Search. However, for the hospitality sector, an equally important question remains: will Google’s new compliance solution genuinely improve the visibility of businesses themselves, or will it simply redirect even more traffic towards other large intermediaries?

This is not a theoretical concern

Google’s first attempt to comply with the DMA illustrated precisely this risk. By removing interactive features, including maps and free booking links, and reverting many hospitality searches to a traditional list of blue links, Google significantly reduced the visibility of independent hospitality businesses and their direct offers.

Ironically, the Commission rejected that first compliance attempt because Google had failed to eliminate its own self-preferencing, not because the changes risked weakening the position of direct hospitality offers and strengthening other powerful online intermediaries.

Yet the DMA was designed to make digital markets more contestable, empower businesses that depend on online platforms, and ultimately offer consumers greater choice. Compliance cannot therefore be considered successful if Google’s solution merely shifts market power from Google to other digital intermediaries while independent hospitality businesses lose further opportunities to compete for bookings and build direct relationships with their customers.

We have fined Google €890 million for breaching the Digital Markets Act, by promoting their own services and restricting customer access to alternatives on Google Search and Google Play.https://t.co/zFChIQxKua pic.twitter.com/QTqdpS6dyY

— European Commission (@EU_Commission) July 23, 2026

Google is now testing a revised compliance solution, which the Commission will continue to assess. While it remains too early to judge its full impact, there are legitimate reasons to scrutinise whether the new design could once again undermine the visibility of small hospitality operators and give online intermediaries an unintended competitive advantage.

The Commission’s assessment should therefore look beyond the formal treatment of Google’s own services and consider the competitive impact of the proposed solution. Our joint statements with the airline and rail sectors reflect this shared expectation: DMA compliance should strengthen competition across the travel ecosystem, not simply redistribute market power among large digital intermediaries.

If this broader competitive impact were overlooked, whether because of a gap in the DMA’s design or an overly narrow interpretation of its provisions, it would set a dangerous precedent. It would suggest that a compliance solution can satisfy the letter of the law while undermining its fundamental objective: creating fairer and more contestable markets for the businesses that rely on gatekeepers.

Today, the @EU_Commission provides guidance to Google under the Digital Markets Act to:

→ enable interoperability with Android for AI services
→ provide search engines & AI chatbots with search function with access to Google's anonymised search datahttps://t.co/W839tKLusx pic.twitter.com/k3MhoH8V2q

— Digital EU (@DigitalEU) July 16, 2026

This debate extends far beyond Google Search, at a time when European hospitality businesses face additional immediate challenges that risk further undermining competitiveness and the ability to operate independently.

First, the rise of conversational AI is reshaping travel discovery, making AI assistants a gateway to hospitality businesses. The Google case could set important rules for future AI-driven travel tools, as poor representation in Search today may lead to even lower visibility in AI-generated recommendations tomorrow.

Second, the EU is considering repealing the Platform-to-Business (P2B) Regulation, which introduced fairness and transparency obligations for online platforms and paved the way for the DMA. Removing these protections could leave independent hospitality businesses with fewer means to challenge unfair practices beyond the relatively narrow scope of the DMA.

Ensuring that Google’s new Search experience treats hotels, restaurants, and cafés fairly is therefore about far more than one compliance case. It will determine whether the DMA fulfils its broader promise of creating digital markets where businesses compete on the quality of their offer, rather than on the market power of the platforms standing between them and their customers.

The Commission has taken an important first step. The next one is even more important. The success of the DMA will not ultimately be judged by the size of the fine imposed on Google, but by whether Europe’s hospitality businesses emerge with greater visibility, greater choice and a genuine opportunity to compete on equal terms in the digital marketplace.

L’article Why Google’s DMA compliance must not come at the expense of Europe’s small hospitality operators est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.

While politicians will speak of peace agreements and security guarantees, businesses will ask a different question: who will build the peace economy?

The first people crossing Ukraine’s borders after a settlement are unlikely to be holidaymakers. They will be engineers, contractors, diplomats, development agencies, insurers, investors and members of the Ukrainian diaspora returning to assess homes, businesses and opportunities.

This means the country’s initial recovery will not resemble a traditional tourism rebound. Instead, it will be driven by a reconstruction mobility economy, where infrastructure projects and human movement reinforce one another. Hotels, serviced apartments, conference venues and transport hubs could become profitable long before beach resorts or leisure destinations recover.

According to estimates by the World Bank, the European Commission, the United Nations and the Ukrainian government, reconstruction needs have reached almost $600 billion. Transport alone accounts for more than $96 billion, while energy, housing and cultural infrastructure will require billions more.

This is about far more than replacing damaged buildings. It is an opportunity to redefine Ukraine’s transport network, economic geography and position as a European destination.

I met with @WorldBank Group President Ajay Banga to discuss continued assistance in assessing the damage inflicted on Ukraine and preparing the relevant reports.

I shared that Russia’s attacks are becoming increasingly brutal, which makes it vital to intensify efforts in pooling… pic.twitter.com/fmiJrK7w8S

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) June 18, 2025

Contractors before tourists

Tourism will return, but only after fundamental conditions are restored. Airspace must reopen, insurance providers must regain confidence, transport links need repairing, contaminated land must be cleared and reliable energy supplies re-established.

Until then, contractors will arrive before tourists.

Hotels in Kyiv, Lviv and other western cities are likely to be filled by infrastructure specialists, international lenders, diplomatic delegations and executives competing for reconstruction contracts. As a result, demand may shift towards extended-stay accommodation, corporate housing and conference facilities rather than conventional leisure hotels.

Western Ukraine is expected to recover first. Regions such as Lviv, Zakarpattia and Ivano-Frankivsk have remained comparatively secure, maintain close links with the European Union and already possess functioning tourism infrastructure. Lviv could emerge as a centre for investment conferences, diplomatic meetings and cultural events linked to reconstruction.

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The Carpathian region presents another opportunity. Existing wellness resorts could evolve into centres for rehabilitation, combining healthcare, wellness and leisure. However, policymakers will need to balance investment with sustainable planning to avoid uncontrolled development, environmental degradation and rising housing costs.

Kyiv is likely to become the administrative heart of reconstruction, while Odesa could eventually regain its role as Ukraine’s maritime gateway, although the revival of ports, cruise tourism and coastal hospitality will depend on long-term security and mine clearance.

Transport will shape the recovery

Transport will be central to Ukraine’s recovery. During the war, rail corridors through Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Moldova became essential lifelines for people and goods. After peace, these routes could evolve into permanent economic corridors linking Ukraine more closely with the European Union.

Expanding European-gauge rail connections would improve trade and make cross-border travel faster and more attractive. Night trains, integrated ticketing systems and simplified border procedures could become the backbone of Ukraine’s early tourism recovery while commercial aviation remains limited.

Aviation, however, will not resume overnight. Airports require far more than political approval to reopen. Safety certification, air traffic management, insurance, energy resilience and security infrastructure will all have to be restored before airlines return. Lviv Airport may be among the first to reopen because of its proximity to the EU, while Kyiv’s Boryspil Airport would represent the greatest long-term economic prize, reconnecting Ukraine with European and global aviation networks.

Europe is Ukraine's strongest partner, top donor & key investor.

With €2.3 billion in agreements signed, set to unlock up to €10 billion in investments.

And a new European Flagship Fund for the Reconstruction of Ukraine, rebuilding businesses & homes. https://t.co/zkTbxPxdGj

— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) July 10, 2025

Rebuilding responsibly

Healthcare could also become an important pillar of Ukraine’s recovery. The country will need extensive rehabilitation services for veterans, injured civilians and those living with long-term physical and psychological trauma. While these facilities will initially serve a humanitarian purpose, they could later position Ukraine as a regional centre for rehabilitation, prosthetics, reconstructive medicine and wellness.

Another challenge will be managing international interest in places that have become symbols of the war. Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol and other devastated communities will inevitably attract visitors seeking to understand what happened.

Ukraine should resist the temptation to commercialise these locations as “war tourism”. Instead, they should be developed as places of remembrance, education and reflection, with local communities helping shape how their stories are told. Revenue generated from visitors should contribute to memorials, rehabilitation programmes and local recovery rather than purely commercial activities.

The economic race after peace

Investment opportunities will extend well beyond tourism. The first wave of tourism- and mobility-related investment alone could amount to tens of billions of euros, creating employment across construction, transport, hospitality, healthcare, technology and cultural restoration. Yet Ukraine’s greatest challenge may not be securing finance, but developing bankable projects, ensuring transparent procurement and creating investment structures that inspire confidence among international investors.

The shape of Ukraine’s recovery will ultimately depend on how peace unfolds. A fragile ceasefire may encourage investment in western Ukraine while keeping aviation and maritime transport restricted. A more durable settlement backed by credible security guarantees would allow airports to reopen, international hotel brands to enter the market and leisure tourism gradually to return.

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Even under the most optimistic scenario, recovery is unlikely to be evenly distributed. Western regions will naturally attract investment first because they present lower risks. Without careful public policy, this could widen the economic gap between western Ukraine and the communities in the east and south that have suffered the greatest destruction.

Ukraine’s reconstruction will reshape not only one country but the wider economic geography of Central and Eastern Europe. New railways, reopened airports, restored cultural landmarks and modern healthcare facilities will redefine mobility across the region.

Tourism will not simply benefit from this transformation; it will help drive it. Hotels will host engineers before holidaymakers. Trains will carry investors alongside returning families. Cultural restoration will strengthen both national identity and international appeal.

The companies and countries that succeed will be those that prepare before the peace agreement is signed, building partnerships, securing financing and developing projects that can move quickly once conditions allow.

When the war finally ends, the political negotiations may be be over. But the economic race to rebuild Ukraine will only just begin.

L’article How tourism and mobility could help rebuild Ukraine est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.

The existence of the greenhouse effect, although not yet known by that name, was first proposed as early as 1824 by Joseph Fourier. In 1856, Eunice Newton Foote demonstrated that the warming effect of the sun is greater in air containing water vapour than in dry air, and even greater in air with higher concentrations of carbon dioxide. We have therefore understood the basic science behind the greenhouse effect for around 170 years.

The oil and gas industries have worked hard to deny the human contribution to global warming. Published in 2010, Merchants of Doubt, by historians of science Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, documented how lobbyists deliberately generated doubt about the scientific evidence behind acid rain, the ozone hole, the dangers of tobacco, climate change denial, and the attacks on Rachel Carson. Those same tactics continue today, with lobbyists undermining science on behalf of those who benefit from business as usual.

As you read this, you may be thinking, “Tell me something new.”

That is precisely the point. Climate change, drought, wildfires, storm-driven flooding and sea-level rise have become the new normal. It is so much easier to “…put off till tomorrow what may be done the day after tomorrow just as well”, to blame others and deny responsibility.

The global tourism industry both contributes to and suffers from climate change through its greenhouse gas emissions.

According to research published in Nature Communications:

“Global tourism emissions grew by 3.5% per year between 2009 and 2019, double the growth rate of the worldwide economy, reaching 5.2 Gt CO₂-e, or 8.8% of total global greenhouse gas emissions in 2019. The primary drivers of emissions growth are slow technology efficiency gains (0.3% per year), combined with sustained high growth in tourism demand (3.8% per year in constant 2009 prices).”

Fear of wildfires, destroyed or empty accommodation, damaged destination brands, severe economic losses, and scarred landscapes are all consequences of this growing crisis. Yet there has been surprisingly little research into the economic impact of wildfires on the tourism industry.

Luís Catela Nunes, Professor of Applied Econometrics at Nova School of Business and Economics, analysed data from 278 Portuguese municipalities covering the period from 2000 to 2016. He concluded:

“The estimated annual costs to the Portuguese economy due to the impact of burned areas in 2030 range between €17.03 million and €24.18 million for domestic tourist arrivals, and between €18.26 million and €38.08 million for inbound tourism. By 2050, those costs will increase at least fourfold.”

Back in 2023, the US Congress Joint Economic Committee reported that:

“…wildfires in the United States cause between $394 billion and $893 billion in damages annually, equivalent to between 2% and 4% of US GDP.”

Wildfires impose substantial costs on both the supply and demand sides of tourism. More research is needed, but above all, the tourism industry must play a far greater role in addressing the human-induced climate change to which it contributes.

L’article Never put off till tomorrow: tourism can no longer delay climate action  est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.

During his July visit to Washington, al-Zaidi placed investment at the centre of diplomacy, pursuing partnerships with major American energy and infrastructure companies and presenting Iraq not as a permanent theatre of crisis, but as a market capable of absorbing capital on a significant scale. Agreements announced around the visit were valued by Iraq’s oil minister at approximately $200bn. Such numbers should be treated as prospective commitments rather than completed investment, but the direction is unmistakable: al-Zaidi wants international capital to see Iraq differently.

The economic case for this shift is urgent. Oil accounted for an estimated 53% of Iraq’s real GDP, 88% of government revenue and 91% of merchandise exports in 2025, leaving the country acutely exposed to production restrictions, lower prices and regional disruption. The IMF estimates that oil revenues could continue to represent more than 90% of government income through 2030 without substantial reform, while Iraq’s non-oil growth declined from 13.8% in 2023 to about 2.5% in 2024.

Al-Zaidi therefore inherits not merely an economic challenge, but a question of national resilience. His strength is that he appears to understand investment diplomacy as an instrument of sovereignty: the broader Iraq’s partnerships, private sector and productive economy become, the less vulnerable Baghdad will be to fluctuations in one commodity or pressure from any single foreign power.

Tourism should become one of the defining pillars of this diversification. Iraq possesses six UNESCO World Heritage properties and an almost unparalleled concentration of civilisational, archaeological and religious assets: Babylon, ancient Ur, the citadel of Erbil, the southern marshlands, the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, the historic memory of Baghdad and the mountain landscapes of the Kurdistan Region.

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Yet the country’s most widely available internationally comparable tourism data remain strikingly outdated. The World Bank records 892,000 international arrivals in 2013, while recorded international tourism receipts reached approximately $955mn in 2020. These imperfect figures reveal both a statistical weakness and an economic opportunity. Iraq is already receiving substantial religious and regional travel, but has not yet converted the full scale of that movement into an integrated visitor economy built around international hotels, destination management, cultural routes, retail, restaurants, entertainment, transportation and professional tourism services.

Aviation will determine whether this potential becomes an investable industry. Iraq’s National Development Plan states that its airports handled approximately 2.04mn passengers in 2022, compared with almost 3.97mn in 2018, illustrating both the damage caused by instability and the scope for recovery. Baghdad International Airport’s existing three terminals have a combined theoretical capacity of roughly 7.5mn passengers a year, while the redevelopment programme envisages a new terminal initially capable of handling 9mn passengers and later as many as 15mn.

For al-Zaidi, these should not be regarded simply as transport projects. Airports are economic platforms: they attract airlines, hotels, logistics providers, conference organisers, retailers and international investors. A coherent programme linking Baghdad, Basra, Najaf, Karbala, Mosul, Erbil and Sulaymaniyah with simplified visa procedures, modern airport services and stronger global airline partnerships could transform Iraq into a regional junction between the Gulf, Türkiye, the Levant and Central Asia.

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The test of al-Zaidi’s leadership will be whether his evident ambition can be translated into institutions that outlast political cycles: predictable regulation, transparent public-private partnerships, investment protection, credible procurement and consistent security. There are serious obstacles, and no responsible investor will ignore them. But frontier markets are rarely transformed by leaders who wait for perfect conditions; they are transformed by leaders who create confidence before it fully exists.

Al-Zaidi’s youth, commercial background and early emphasis on international economic engagement give him an unusual opportunity to become the architect of Iraq’s post-oil transition. If he treats tourism, aviation and travel-related infrastructure as national development policy rather than peripheral entertainment, Iraq could generate employment across every level of society, give new commercial life to its extraordinary heritage and reposition itself as one of the Middle East’s most consequential investment stories.

His task is not simply to govern a country rich in oil, but to reveal the far greater value of the Iraq that exists beyond it.

L’article Iraq’s new prime minister has an opportunity to make tourism a national priority  est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.