At last month’s Virtuoso Travel Week, a panel of travel advisors from around the world answered questions about the trends they were seeing in travel. One issue that all the advisors agreed on was that climate change is affecting how and where clients travel.
For instance, Scandinavian and Northern European destinations are becoming more popular because traditional European favorites — such as Spain, Italy and Greece — are too uncomfortably hot in the summer. The rise in temperatures is also driving more travelers to visit places in what used to be considered the “off season.” Today, shoulder-season travel not only means more moderate temperatures, but often fewer crowds and better pricing.
Our clients are generally younger — often with small children — and people just don’t want to travel to a destination that’s well over 100 degrees with a baby.
“Our clients are generally younger — often with small children — and people just don’t want to travel to a destination that’s well over 100 degrees with a baby,” said Paul Tumpowsky, CEO of Skylark, a luxury travel agency in New York. “It’s just not pleasant. So, we’ve actually seen a big rise in destinations such as Norway and Copenhagen, Denmark. It has been interesting for us, because we’ve never really booked those destinations over the summer period.”
On the Virtuoso panel, the advisors were all focused on high-end clients who can afford to travel whenever and wherever they want. If previous trends are any indication, the preferences and actions of luxury travelers often eventually become mainstream, suggesting that we are in store for large shifts over the next few years.
In our new cover story, we look at some of the issues in selling responsible travel today, including the difficulty defining terms such as “sustainability.” There’s no question that this type of travel is the future of our industry, but there’s still a lot to learn about how climate change will affect us all.
