The head of the Travel Foundation has called on travel companies to revise their business model.
Jeremy Sampson, Travel Foundation chief executive, told the Evora ‘A World for Travel’ forum in Portugal: “There are new considerations in creating a model that are impossible to ignore.
“We ignore calls for more equity and inclusivity and the desire for more responsible behaviour at our peril. We have to adopt a new model and this is the moment to do it.”
He insisted: “It’s not that we need to bring communities to the table – communities are the table.”
However, Hal Vogel, professor of travel economics at Columbia University and founder of Vogel Capital, told the forum: “The main factors in travel and tourism have always been time and density. So for an investor, how can you increase the productivity of a property? How can you increase the density?
“So on flights, the number of seats has increased and the size of seats decreased. The size of hotel rooms has shrunk.
“All that turned upside down in the pandemic. The cost structure now will be more confused. But the value proposition for investors still goes back to efficiency.”