From Covid-19 to COP-21: a ‘Travel Typology’ for our times

This essay suggests a future for travel that emphasizes what is desirable for us, within what is feasible for the biosphere, which I call ‘smart travel.’ First I offer three short stories from my own travels, which evoke the major themes and tensions I develop, around the way we have to transform travel in the coming years. Then, I look at how insights from the pandemic inform the ecological and climate crisis, and how tourism and all sectors will have to transform in the context of the ecological and climatic crisis. Generally, I argue, smart travel weaves together thinking from scholarly and policy areas like: systems and complex thought, the Paris Accord and a Global Green New Deal, ecological protection and regeneration, restorative justice, mutual aid, fair trade, circular economics, and fossil fuel degrowth. Finally, from this thinking, I sketch out a basis of smart travel in a ‘travel typology,’ six principles for how tourism can be a part of, and even leaders in, our global solutions. The travel typology supports the view that to change both work and holidays would improve both. Tourism can be a leader, in local cultural, economic, and ecological flourishing.