7 The future of tourism
We have said that both responsibility and sustainability should remain at the centre of tourism offers. This means it is important that we understand what the concerns of each ‘megatrend’ might be and how we might address or avoid the non-sustainable and non-responsible aspects of each. A company called Data Appeal wrote a report of the international travel market highlighting seven ‘megatrends’ for travel and tourism in 2026 and beyond. These trends are:
This is a picutre of the Anne of Green Gables Museum (as mentioned in bullet point 2 Set-jetting).
This is a picture of Longmeadow Cider, Craigavon Co. Armagh, Ireland from its entry on the Tourism Cares Meaningful Map (as mentioned in bullet point 6 Experience-led).
Why might holidays arranged by travel agencies be more or less responsible and sustainable?
Discussion
Some travel agencies are geared towards beach holidays or city breaks in popular destinations. They may contribute to overtourism and touristification. All-inclusive hotels discourage tourists from spending money in their destinations so there is little to no economic benefit to local people. There could also be substantial leakage if the flight/hotel is not owned or managed locally. Some hotels may not be environmentally aware or care about the important role they could play for a community. Other travel agencies may be catering for a particular interest. It may be important to them to be responsible and sustainable and encourage community engagement. On that basis, they might be able to recommend places to stay that do care, where there is little leakage and local people do see benefits or where there is community tourism.
What meaningful local experience might be a good add-on to the Glastonbury Festival?
In order to answer this question, you might like to look at the Glastonbury festival website [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] to see what it does already.
Given tourists are actively seeking out places that use tech-intelligence this does demand there are reliable wifi signals so rural areas may not be able to meet this requirement without some significant investment. Where it can happen, though, such as in a rural area in Jiangsu Province in China, which was not economically developed (Ye et al., 2025) there have been a number of benefits. One of the villagers said that since they adopted smart technology; ‘Urban residents are more willing to visit for tourism and purchase our agricultural produce and our income has also increased significantly.’ This is partly because an increase of visitors encouraged the development of craft and food businesses as well as homestays. Volunteering increased amongst the community to pick up rubbish and remind tourists of where to put it (although it appears littering is reducing due to growing understanding and increased awareness of ecology) all helping to achieve ‘social, economic and environmentally sustainable development’. As the offer is helping the village, and encouraging tourists, and it remains small-scale rather than encouraging hotels or chain restaurants (which might cause significant leakage) this seems a good example of sustainable community tourism handled responsibly. Given that AI use is increasing and what can be done with AI is also increasing, it is likely that ‘smart tourism’ will become more mainstream and be rolled out further to rural as well as urban areas. This content in this course is deliberately staying away from discussions about AI more broadly (including whether it is responsible and sustainable).