Travel’s Big Disruption Came Ahead of Schedule: It Wasn’t the One We Expected

The travel industry has always been an optimistic one, underpinned by the belief that the world is small and international borders are but a minor inconvenience. If you can be on a flight to Mauritius in three hours, booked via an app on your phone, with frequent flyer miles your business travel earned you, why on earth would you stay home?

But for the past decade or so, it's also been something of a sitting duck. Climate change has been coming, we've known that. But despite the talk of carbon offsets and tremendous plastic reduction PR, the travel industry has always been reluctant to admit that the very premise that it is based on — frictionless, consequence-free movement — is very likely at odds with the future that's coming for all of us.

That's a future when the world feels smaller, when extreme weather events impact our lives more often, when the resilience of our communities will start to feel more vital than the performance of the stock market. You could argue that humans will innovate their way out of that future, but a look at the complacency of our leaders (and science) suggests you'd be an optimist to do so. At the very least, we're running out of time.