The UK travel industry is not doing enough to promote its economic strength to government, the Abta Travel Convention heard.
The message came in a presentation on hyperglobalisation by professor Ian Goldin, a director of Oxford Martin School.
He highlighted the importance of the UK travel industry by revealing that £900 per capita is spent on holidays a year – the fourth-largest in the world.
“It is not recognised in Westminster how strong this industry is,” he told delegates during the first morning of business sessions in Greece.
While the UK remains “incredibly stable”, the travel sector faces multiple risks such as the future of EU membership, an “extremely negative” visa regime, the strength of sterling, infrastructure congestion and disintermediation, according to Prof Goldin. There is also the issue of how to cope with increasing demand in destinations already squeezed to capacity.
This is taking place against a background of an ageing global population, increasing numbers of middle class consumers and growing prosperity.
While identifying many concerns facing the travel industry, including rapidly rising inequality and the prospect of 36% of UK jobs being lost to robotics in the next 30 years, Prof Goldin described the overall outlook as “incredibly rosy”.
However, the industry must recognise that “the future is with the elderly” with increasing life expectancy including 700 million over 65s in Asia in the next 10 years.