The travel industry should not “hide behind macro generalisations” on sustainability, a former deputy secretary-general of the United Nations told the opening day of the World Travel and Tourism Council Summit in Hainan.
Mark Malloch Brown, a former UK government minister and now chairman of FTI Consulting in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said: “Any industry with one billion international consumers is, bottom line, a good thing.
“But scratch beneath the surface. Does tourism work as well at the level of individual localities?
“Just 10%-20% of most tourist dollars stay in a destination. Those are the OECD figures for what stays in country and there are countries for which it is less.
“The question is how do we raise that figure? The industry can’t just hide behind macro generalisations.”
Malloch Brown told the Summit: “We need to measure the industry not just on the bottom line but on sustainability.”
He suggested: “It would be great if a hotel gave you a checklist on how much of what you pay stays in the local economy, that explains the local supply chain, tells you the impact on the local economy and on the water supply, tells you the tax the hotel company is paying.”
Malloch Brown argued: “The industry could be a leader on this.”
He said he feared the world is entering an era of “much greater instability” as “along with huge expansion of the global middle class has come huge growth in inequality”.
“Tensions are being exacerbated by the impact of [economic] growth. Previously marginal populations have become further marginalised.”
Malloch Brown cited the Ukraine as an example of “a reversal to a less collaborative, less co-operative world” and said: “The challenges to getting agreement on anything in the UN Security Council are huge.”
He said: “Travel and tourism is a very security-related, risk-related industry.” However, he added: “It is also an industry that bridges the divide between a rising middle class and those people who have been left behind.”