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The 2020 pandemic and previous years’ overtourism issues showed us both the benefits, the relevance, and the limits of the tourism, hospitality and leisure industries for society. We cannot foresee the future, but we can listen to challenges and start developing solutions.
So far we have received more than 900 responses in which these questions have been discussed::
In the name of the global tourism family, many thanks to every single one of you for the inspiring feedback. Your replies are summarized in the sections below.
Don't forget to share YOUR insights (for the first time or again, with new observations):
The 10 quotes below are updated every few minutes and elephant word-clouds are recalculated regularly based on your new survey entries. You have to refresh the page or revisit us every so often to see the changed content.
Very much, because I'm doing it my whole life, formerly employed youth tourism 7 years and now 23 years have my own agency. (June, 2020)
I can't describe tourism just with one word, for me its very complex and not all about a business sector. As I'm from Austria, I know that tourism is one of the biggest player in our country and we couldn't live this comfortable life without all the tourists that are visiting us during the year. But at the same time I'm a tourist as well, when I visit other countries or cities, so I can see both sites and think in a world like this we all know both sites and we barely think about the consequences we cause, by traveling this much and "fast". To cut a long story short, tourism means freedom to me but in the same way it can stress me out, as I'm living in Vienna with a lot of ignorance tourists all day long. (October, 2020)
It will be hard to open our own tourism businesses, which action will we have to take, and how long will it take, to have those opportunities back as were presented to us, before the crisis. (April, 2020)
Concerning is the lack of information and the pure stupidity of many people. All the critics and people who believe in absurd conspiracy theories are absolutely morons. I cannot even believe how ignorant, selfish and careless people are. Im not saying being careful and not believing everything is stupid, no asking questions and criticizing rules is very important. But having just a little bit of common sense is absolutely necessary. I see a it as a clear failure in our education system and im scared that these people are the generation of tomorrow. In school nobody is interested in the subjects the are taught because :" I don't need biology and physics. I will work somewhere else." Then suddenly 5G causes Covid-19 and Bill Gates poisons everyone with his vaccine wich contains little robots to control everybody. Thats just straight up stupid and nonsense. Also I fear that after the pandemic is over everybody will not have changed a bit and just continue on the same as before. (September, 2020)
Take this time to learn, tourism is so important industry and it has countries running only from tourism. Is that what we really want? That is definitely not sustainable way of running a country. Also. Here in Iceland..... tourism companies are lowering their prices, that means FINALLY icelanders can travel in their own country. It was so extreamly expenisve to travel in my own country that I could rather just go to another country and that would have been cheaper. Just think about it. It is crazy that local people can't afford traveling in their own county, right? (April, 2020)
The local knowledge, for hiking in the surrounding mountains. I can show beautiful little places in nature to relax. (June, 2020)
For tourist right now there is only the option to dream of future trips and looking back at past ones. Many destinations around the world already offer digital content to facilitate this. In the future it will be important to receive information about the immunity of the population and I am sure that less crowded destinations will be more popular in the short run. (April, 2020)
https://www.deutschertourismusverband.de/service/coronavirus/best-practices.html (June, 2020)
Lots of people lose their jobs do to this crisis. Employees have to get rid of a lot of job places because they need to safe money and the people who are still working for this company get less paid than before. Lots of employees in Austria exploited the "Kurzarbeit" because they got money from the government but the workers in this company still worked the same amount of hours than before, but they got less income. (October, 2020)
I am really liking the idea about starting over in the field of tourism. I think it's a great idea because the tourism industry has been doing amazing so far for many years and had a lot of profit from different airline companies bringing bilions every year and so on, but I still think that with starting all over we could do even better and make tourism industry better than ever. (March, 2020)