Travel Convention Preview: Keynote speaker warns business leaders over global uncertainty

There is no hiding from the turmoil in the world, whether it’s the Gulf war, the climate crisis or the challenge of AI, and thinking ‘We’ve managed uncertainty before’ won’t help business leaders.

That is according to leadership consultant Eleanor Winton who will deliver the opening keynote at Abta’s Travel Convention in Madeira next month on the event’s theme of ‘Managing uncertainty with confidence’.

Winton points out: “Every industry is addressing uncertainty, and there are processes you can put in place in the way you think about it and the range of potential outcomes to consider.”

But she argues “accepting you’re in a different situation” to the one you grew up in “is barrier number one” to doing that – and for travel, she says “it feels urgent”.
Winton suggests: “A lot of leadership teams have not accepted that. There is a feeling that ‘this will pass’ or ‘we’ve managed uncertainty before and we’ll manage it again’.

“[But] the more you prepare how to make strategic decisions, the more prepared you’ll be.”

Fundamentally, she says: “There is a breakdown of the order we grew up in – an erosion of key institutions, of systems and structures we relied on, and we can only see the future through a narrow lens of what we’ve seen before.”

The factors contributing to uncertainty are familiar – a stalling economy, geopolitics, AI disruption, climate risks – but Winton argues: “Be specific. Talk of geopolitics is general. Is it trade? Is it conflict? The same with climate change – is it warming? Is it flooding? Is it biodiversity loss?

“What explicitly are you concerned about? What is driving most uncertainty? What will have the greatest impact? Have you accounted for the range of possibilities?

“Getting people to realise they can have influence is important. The tendency is to be defensive when there could be opportunities to reshape a business.”

Winton acknowledges: “It’s hard to take a risk and say you’re going to transform a business model – and difficult to look for opportunities, for example, in relation to climate change. The desire to travel isn’t going to go away. [But] the way people experience tourism will be different. If temperatures continue to rise, will that shift part of the market to the UK?

“You’re stuck in a trap if you always think short term. So, what are your assumptions about your business and what might you do differently? What is your current strategy and how robust is it? Who else is in your ecosystem? How robust are they?

“What value are you providing? Is it around trust? [Consider] two or three scenarios and ask: ‘Is the value the same in each?’

“Think about multiple ways the future could look, [because] things we thought unthinkable in 2019 are now normal. We’ve seen a transformation in the way we work. You can hope the uncertainty goes away, but you have agency. You need to be curious about what is happening. No hiding from it.”