Travellers should stop taking flights when boarding a train is a reasonable alternative, according to the founder and executive chair of tour operator Responsible Travel.
Justin Francis said people should not be made to feel guilty about the number of flights they take, but he called for tweaks in behaviour alongside “structural” changes in the approach to tourism.
“We need to stop taking flights when we have trains as an alternative. If there is a rail alternative of two-and-a-half or three hours or less then we should not be flying,” he said.
Francis, the keynote speaker at a responsible tourism conference organised by tourist board body Antor, argued for the introduction of a tax on kerosene and predicted flying would “inevitably” become more expensive.
“I believe very cheap flights will cease,” he said, pointing to sustainable aviation fuel, carbon pricing and carbon targets as among the contributing factors.
He said he was confident a tax on kerosene would be implemented, adding: “We shouldn’t let small charges like air passenger duty distract us from taxing aviation fairly… Some people will be priced out and that is deeply uncomfortable, but so is the impact of climate change on communities.”
In the 150 years up to 2017, he said, tourism had operated in an “age of innocence”, but it was now in a period of “really profound change”.
He recalled making a documentary in 2017 when the impact of overtourism was starkly spelled out.
He said: “We saw that, in some places, we’ve broken the trust built with local people. They were saying, ‘Don’t forget this is our home and there isn’t an unconditional welcome to tourists’.
“They said it felt like they were living in a theme park where more concern was had for visitors than residents.
“It’s not just residents that are concerned about our industry. Regulators are taking a closer look at our industry than ever before.”
The industry has moved into the “age of responsibility”, he said, which requires consulting local people before starting to develop tourism in an area.
“We will also need to stop tourism development when we don’t fully understand the costs as well as the benefits,” he said.
He also called for new ways of managing overtourism and highlighted the risks linked to promoting ‘destination dupes’, which are less crowded and more budget-friendly alternatives to well-known locations.
He said: “Extending to shoulder seasons or marketing ‘destination dupes’ can in some cases make the problem worse.
“At a time when residents are having a little bit of a break, suddenly we’re bringing tourists – or there might be a destination that currently has just the right number of tourists but, because of it being marketed as a destination dupe, becomes overwhelmed.”
However, he warned against attempts to make travellers feel bad about their choices.
“We need to move away from guilting tourists and guilting destination managers,” he said. “Let’s look at the big structural changes instead of guilting you or me about how many flights we take”.
Tourism is currently under-valued by the UK government, he said, but there are some indications it is being taken more seriously.
“I think it will become more central to the government’s strategy but it has been neglected,” he said.
Francis is an advisor to the UK government on the environment.
Responsible Travel offers more than 6,000 trips from about 450 operators.