Overtourism – Dealing with push back and seeking new markets

Transcript

Ged Brown:Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Great to see you all, and I must say it really doesn't help me that I've had to follow Richard Quest and Willie Walsh and all of these incredible industry stalwarts. My name is Ged Brown from an organization called Low Season Traveller, and my organization promotes tourism destinations and works with tourism destinations to help them talk about their low season months as an alternative to the busy peak seasons. And that's particularly relevant for this session because today we're going to be talking about tourism, and specifically we're going to be talking about overtourism, which is a very interesting word for reasons that I will go into shortly. Last year, the world welcomed 1.4 billion international tourist arrivals, which was on a par with the highest ever year that we've had, which was 2019. Side note, when are we going to stop comparing with 2019, by the way? You know, it was 6 years ago already. When can we just do year-on-year comparisons? But anyway, so we saw more tourism arrivals than we've ever seen at any point. Industry predictions in tourism circles are predicting that there's going to be a doubling of international tourist arrivals in the next 20 years. That should send a shiver down your spine because it took us 100 years to gradually and slowly build up from 0 to 1.4 billion international arrivals, and we're looking at potentially doubling that in 20 years. It's a really big problem. And that problem presents itself with the word that for some reason has been used, which is overtourism. And overtourism is a misnomer, make no bones about it. It was a word that was first coined by Skift, a media organization, and effectively it's a meaningless word. Overtourism is the mismanagement of tourism. Overtourism— to be over or under anything requires a point of reference, and we don't have a point of reference because I've spoken to CEOs and ministers of tourism around the world, and I've asked them a simple question: what's the capacity for your destination? And I've never had a single answer. They haven't in many cases done the capacity studies, so they've no idea what the capacity is. So overtourism, undertourism, who knows? And who knows how close your destination is to a position of overtourism or undertourism is to be seen. To help us unravel, we've got an amazing panel for you. Please welcome up to the stage Peter Glade, the CCO of TUI Airline, who's going to bring a perspective of a major leisure carrier. deeply embedded in established European markets. Peter, you're very welcome. Majid Khan, the CEO of Saudi Air Connectivity Program , is going to offer insights into proactively developing new markets and connectivity as part of a national vision. And Sascha Feuerherd, who's a Senior Associate Partner at Aviado Partners, who's going to provide a strategic consulting view on airline management and restructuring in this context. Please give them a big welcome.

Sascha Feuerherd:Please, gentlemen.

Ged Brown:Let me have a quick drink. First of all, I think before we dive in, I'd like each of you to outline for us how overtourism, that word, how that is impacting your business and your day-to-day so far. We'll start off with yourself, Peter.

Peter Glade:Well, it's part of the day-to-day that we're living in TUI. TUI started their environmental office already 30 years ago. And I think it's 10 years ago that they enlarged the mandate of the colleagues working there to also include those kinds of questions. So it's really day-to-day part of our DNA to look at this.

Ged Brown:And yourself, Majid?

Majid Khan:In Saudi Arabia, I mean, we have a—

Ged Brown:You don't have overtourism?

Majid Khan:No, we don't. I mean, we have now a national tourism strategy, a national aviation strategy, which is well aligned, and actually, tourism, that's something which has been thought into it to make sure that we don't, I mean, end up in a situation which we shouldn't. So our plan is definitely to spread the tourists all around the beautiful country of Saudi Arabia.

Ged Brown:Fair play. And yourself, Sascha?

Sascha Feuerherd:Seen it from both sides. One is in the airline perspective, being in management positions with carriers on the incoming side, Maldives, Madagascar, but also as a consultant when we advise on network, on pricing, which are measures and tools to steer a little bit from the airline side.

Ged Brown:So, um, coming back to you, Peter, um, when you, you know, you, you guys serve some of the European tourism hotspots and have done for obviously a great many years, places like the Mediterranean, the Canaries, um, how has that experience shaped TUI's perspective on overtourism, um, as it becomes more of a More of a sort of a pressing issue.

Peter Glade:I think—

Ged Brown:is it— and just on that, sorry, is overtourism in TUI circles, is that classified as a major risk to your business or a major opportunity for your business?

Peter Glade:It's an opportunity. I really think it's an opportunity, and we all do. The people that are protesting in the streets of Mallorca and the Canaries, wherever you've seen that, they're not necessarily protesting against tourism. Sebastian Ebeler, our group CEO, flew to Mallorca last year and started off a conversation directly at one of those demonstrations, and he's now regularly meeting people and discussing with them. So I think we have a pretty good, pretty good overview of what's happening. They want a different form of tourism, and that is for us as a virtually integrated organization really an opportunity And now if I'm just taking the airline perspective, of course it is an opportunity. It's very easy to fill up a destination in the high, high peak season as an airline. I fill up my planes, I get good yields, it's wonderful. But working with the— with every stakeholder in a destination to extend a season, to make a season attractive in the low— a destination attractive in the low season, that prevent— that's a super incentive for me if I'm looking at how to plan the network of TUI Airline.

Ged Brown:For sure. And Majid, you know, a slightly sort of different take for you. You're in a destination where you're looking, you know, you're looking for growth, you know, a bit like the last panel talking about growth. Do you, you know, do you kind of look at what's going on around the world and see the cases of overtourism and the effects of overtourism? And when you do see that, how does that impact how you're strategically looking to grow your connectivity within the Saudi region.

Majid Khan:I mean, just to explain a bit about Saudi Arabia first, the geography of Saudi Arabia. I mean, it's a country with 29 airports. That's, I mean, we know when tourists, they come to Europe, I mean, for beaches, it's the beautiful south, a city break, it could be Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Oslo, etc. I mean, mountains, Swiss Alps, etc. And when we look on Saudi Arabia, we have 1,700 kilometers of coastline. There is cultural tourism, religious tourism, UNESCO sites. We are building the new— I mean, I would say it's next-level Maldives in Red Sea. We have Al Ula, etc. So all this— so imagine when, for instance, Asians, they come to Europe, they have itinerary of 4 or 5 different places all around Europe.

Sascha Feuerherd:Yeah.

Majid Khan:Saudi Arabia offers that in one place. When we have our target, just to put things into context, our target is to reach 150 million tourists by 2030. We have crossed 100 million mark now, but the aim is to spread them all around Saudi Arabia to all these beautiful cities. We have actually segmented what we want, which markets we want to target, and to which places of Saudi Arabia. For instance, when we discuss air connectivity, we don't talk about 20 daily flights just to Riyadh from one destination. We really talk about how can we bring people, for instance, to our main airports, but at the same time spread them all around, I mean, all around the country. We have learned what's happening in the sector and implemented into our strategy.

Ged Brown:When you say that you've got a target for 150 million, by when was it?

Majid Khan:By 2030.

Ged Brown:By 2030. Is that then the capacity for your destination?

Majid Khan:No. I mean, we have 2 targets. One is our tourism targets, which is 150 million inbound tourists. The second one is our national aviation strategy, where we want to grow from plus 100 million now, I think it's 120 plus, to 330 million passengers. That's the passengers, of course, there will be a lot of transfer, etc. But Saudi Arabia is the size of Europe. It's a continent itself. When you look on, for instance, Italy, Spain, France, 3 countries together, if I remember the numbers correct, they had 236 million tourists, only these 3 countries together last year. Saudi Arabia, it's literally a continent. We believe, no, this is not our limit.

Ged Brown:I love how you're already thinking about moving people around. the region. And I know that we've spoken before and you were also talking about moving them around the times of the year as well.

Majid Khan:True.

Ged Brown:To have that full sort of diversification. Peter, one of the ways, one of the subjects that we're talking about is the pushback from overtourism. And obviously you touched on it before, there's people in Barcelona squirting water pistols at tourists. One of the other ways that the pushback is being shown is through through governments implementing things like tourist taxes and regulations. How are those kind of measures directly impacting TUI's route planning and capacity decisions, and ultimately the passenger demand in your core markets?

Peter Glade:Obviously, taxes drive prices, drive down the attractiveness of destinations, and that's the intention behind those. But there's cleverer ways how to, to reach that. Um, if you're looking at the investments that the government in the— on the Balearic— on the Balearics has done, they, they have really good ideas on how to drive sustainability. We just need to make sure— or sustainable tourism for, for the destination— we just need to make sure that by implementing taxes We're not hitting one form of tourism and then encouraging an unsteered form of tourism. So if we're having a tax on hotel beds, does that just increase the number of people that directly book a finca because it becomes more attractive? So we really have to take a holistic view on this. And for me, a very good example is the, the way that they've done it in the Canary Islands, where they've implemented a lot of good regulations that is really trying to steer the entire development of the tourism for the islands. Like, when you build a hotel, try to build as many staff— as many houses as possible for your staff as well, so that you don't have the impact on the rents in the market.

Majid Khan:Yeah.

Peter Glade:When you are coming in I think a good example is Venice with their— with the cruise ships that are coming there. So in the last year— I'm sorry, I'm quoting 2019 now too— Before pandemic, it was 20 million daytime arrivals. Only 5 of them were from— 5 million were from cruise ships. So that you can regulate because you can go to the port and say, well, you're just accepting X amount of cruise ships per day. far more difficult to regulate the— or to do something with the other 15 million. And that's why through taxes and regulations you can steer tourism, but you really have to do it in a holistic view. And that's where I believe the right approach is to bring everybody together on a table and really have a thorough discussion about this.

Ged Brown:The tourism taxes, they've been implemented obviously, you know, famously in Venice. I think there's a couple of other places where they've been implemented. And I always find it very interesting that they said, you know, this is how we're handling overtourism, we're bringing in tourism taxes. There's not a single— unless anybody else can correct me on this— there's not a single example where the introduction of tourism taxes has led to a decrease in visitor arrivals. In fact, in every single case, it's increased anyway. So, so you have to then question, you know, what the heck is the purpose of these tourism taxes? And are they effective? And I think You know, it's clear that you're not particularly an advocate of that, and I think there's smarter ways than literally bashing people over with a tourism tax that generally just goes into general government coffers anyway. Majid, do you have any particular take on the tourism tax?

Peter Glade:Do you know what a tax is in Saudi Arabia?

Ged Brown:You're not thinking about bringing anything into Saudi?

Majid Khan:I would say my pinpoint has always been, I mean, being in the aviation sector for more than a decade now, it's these famous aviation taxes which are implemented by the governments because there is maybe a gap in the state budget, etc., or you have to pay for some pensions, and then you believe, okay, this is something passengers should end up paying. Because at the end of the day, this is something which affects the route performance and which will make our destination less attractive for the passengers, for the airlines, and this is something we are thinking more about. So as Europe is a really, really important market for us, and of course if you pay €8, €9 to fly intra-Europe, but you have to pay approximately €30 because we are outside Europe, it definitely makes us less competitive. Yeah, so this is my take on the taxes.

Ged Brown:Sascha, any thoughts on this? I mean, is it a bit of a nonsense anyway? You know, if I'm paying I don't know, €2,000 to go for a weekend break in Venice, and Venice is going to charge me €10 a day. I mean, genuinely, I'm not a wealthy man, but that's not going to put me off. I'm not going to think, do you know what, maybe not Venice this year, love, we'll go to Barcelona instead or somewhere else. Is it just nonsense?

Sascha Feuerherd:It's not nonsense, but I'm with Peter, it's not the standard solution. What we possibly must do is take a step back and think about— there are unique and different challenges that we face in different locations. Some of them, if you're kind of an island, then it can be reached by a cruise ship or a plane. Venice, you can go by car very close to it, so you can't stop it by putting a tax on, let's say, an aircraft or slots on it, or the same for the cruise ships, because then the people can still arrive by other means. So perhaps one has to think about that very jointly with the different parties on one table. It is at least a solution that is easier coming to mind than in other destinations. Some destinations you can simply regulate the amount of tourists coming to your place, but at the end of the day, it's a demand and supply question.

Majid Khan:It is—

Sascha Feuerherd:we want to go for experiences when we go for vacation. We want to see something, we want to have something that we have in our memory, and that is the same for many. And there are some places many of us want to see, and now the question is just how could we balance that Because there's also the incoming side, the hotels, the local population, they live from the tourism as well. So it's more of making sure it's not a hassle, it's not negative, because if I'm wandering streets with 10,000 people around me and I can't even see the local sights, then it's not an experience, then it's a hassle, then it's not something I want to share that it was positive. So for me, it is more about balancing that, finding a way, price or cost, play a role in the game, as ugly as that sounds. And we have that already. Hotels are not cheaper in vacation periods. So if you have kids— I've got 3— it's cheaper to travel without kids outside of the school holiday period. And that's planes and hotels and everything. So balancing is the, the keyword for me.

Ged Brown:Yeah, absolutely. You know, when we, when we talked before, and I think you mentioned it as well, Peter, about working with you know, the local sort of stakeholders. You know, this overtourism issue, and I really hate the word, I can't stress enough, I hate the word overtourism. I just don't think it describes it. If we can just call it tourism management or mismanagement. But it is an issue for everybody, and it's an issue in each of the destinations for all of the stakeholders. How do you bring all the stakeholders together? Do you as the airline, do you work with all of the destination stakeholders, you know, with the hoteliers, with groups of locals, with hoteliers, tour operators, all of that. Do you have any sort of forums or anything where you bring them all together to discuss, you know, are we on the right lines here? Are we going about this in the right way? How do you engage the stakeholders from a TUI side of things?

Peter Glade:Actually, we do, and that is a bit of a different approach to, you know, if you're just an airline. you're bringing passengers into— or purely an airline, I should say— you're bringing passengers into a destination, but the moment that they've left the airport, they're kind of not yours anymore. But when you're working for such a vertically integrated group, well, until they return home safely, they're still yours to take care of. So, and when they're at home, you still want to be in touch with them so that they keep spending, but that's a different story. Um, So I think the best example, at least the one that I know, is what we're doing in Rhodes with our CoLab just here in Greece. So we had the Minister of Tourism— no, sorry, it was the— I think even here, the President that founded it together with the government of the South Aegean. TUI is in there. And we're sitting together in, in this co-lab environment with all touristic players in Rhodes, with citizens, with activist groups, with hoteliers, incoming agencies, other tour operators, everybody together. And we're trying to find ways how to make tourism sustainable for Rhodes. So on the one side, about how many hotels do we want to build? Do we still want to build hotels? What is, what is a sensible development plan for the island, but it goes down to special classes in school for kids to teach them what sustainable tourism is. Rhodes is going to be depending on tourism also in the future, so when somebody has a great idea and they've been taught from kids' times that, hey, when you have a great business idea, also think sustainability, that is a step change. Between all the players, we're going to be investing €250 million until 2013 just in developing sustainable tourism for Rhodes. That's the best in class.

Majid Khan:Yeah.

Peter Glade:But also, you know, in Egypt, well, we're sitting there and we just said, took it on us to say, every time we're building a hotel, we also build locations where the people can sleep and stay. We've got our TUI Foundation where we're having over 90,000 females, women, educated on tourism matters, giving them a career opportunity. So it's part of our DNA. Sometimes we're working very closely with everybody, sometimes we have to do it on our own because there is no counterpart, but wherever we go, we always have the offer for the players to be open for discussions.

Ged Brown:When you're talking about When you're talking about new hotels and properties, I'm gonna sort of mention this because this is something I don't know if everybody else gets concerned about this. I have a little bit of a challenge with that. Just because we know that the built environment accounts for between 30 and 35% of greenhouse gas emissions, and aviation is, what is it, 3%, 5%? And aviation gets absolutely battered by the fact that it's, you know, it needs to come down, it needs to come down. We had a session on it yesterday, and the built environment accounts for about 35% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Is it right that we're still building new properties which in most cases, when you look at the Met, are sat practically empty for 6 months of the year? Is that fair? I mean, like, I'm not— and I'm not— and I'm not having a go at TUI, I'm really not, but But this is the kind of stuff that I'm wrestling with on a regular basis. I just think there's a disconnect here. You know, we're still building properties that we know are going to be empty for 6 months of the year. Surely we should be aiming to fill those existing ones. It's like reduce, reuse, recycle. Use those existing ones, and then we're not having to build any new infrastructure. Is that fair?

Peter Glade:It depends. Well, it's definitely fair, but the answer is it depends. So if I'm developing a new destination, trying to take some burden off other destinations, trying to also enlarge the season of the year, right, or the tourism season within the year, I will probably need to build new properties. So there's a difference if I'm building the first, the second, the third hotel in in a not yet tapped into tourism destination and we're building something new, compared to building the 150th hotel in an already overcrowded location. So I'm with you with that. I'm a democrat by nature, so I believe in the power of governments to, to have construction plans, to have development plans, and to say where they want, where where they want more development and where not. And then make sure that those development— that this development is then made with people that have a strategy, with people that want to develop things in a sustainable fashion, and not just have it whoever pays most gets that piece of land.

Ged Brown:Fair play. I'll leave it on that one now.

Peter Glade:Thank you.

Ged Brown:Majid, the ACP model involves aligning governments, tourism bodies, and airlines. So we're talking about aligning all of these different stakeholders. How do you ensure that community well-being and sustainable capacity are central to these partnerships when you're attracting new air services and new routes?

Majid Khan:As I mentioned, we have a tourism strategy, aviation strategy, which is well aligned. And then we have developed a pipeline actually now for all the source markets. We have defined exactly which source markets we're going to focus on. to attract inbound tourism to Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and potentially which airline. I mean, we are working with a lot of airlines, of course, around the world, and for which destinations. For these destinations, first of all, when we look on the stakeholders, I mean, we have our civil aviation. Everybody's working on one goal, that's Vision 2030 in Saudi Arabia. That's very, very simple. It's our Ministry of Tourism, Ministry of Transport, our civil aviation, our airports, etc., everybody is focusing on Vision 2030. The goal is exactly the same for all of us.

Sascha Feuerherd:Wonderful.

Majid Khan:When we develop the routes actually to, let's assume, the Eastern region, we will have the local tourism board with us. We will have all local stakeholders, Saudi Aramco, everybody with us to actually align. Alignment is important. When we are aligned, okay, these are the routes we're going to target on, We know we have support from our backyard.

Ged Brown:What about, you mentioned a variety of different stakeholders there, the hoteliers, the local and regional tourism authorities. What about the voices of the local people? Are they brought into the conversation as well?

Majid Khan:Absolutely. I mean, what I've seen with Saudis, Saudis, I mean, one of the things Saudi Arabia is, which surprised me positively, hospitality. I mean, Saudis are incredible people. Saudi, I mean, you can build a nice hotel, nice resorts, and say, okay, I'm going to fly to that destination, but it's about the people. And that's where Saudis comes in. I mean, they love to take good care of the tourists, actually. That's my reflection, and that's what we hear from everybody around the world who are actually visiting, I mean, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. So they are well on the track. They know exactly, I mean, which airlines we're going to attract, which It's about having the customer-centric approach. I mean, it's not, okay, we're going to go for airline ABC, but which airline do we go for? Which type of passengers and travelers are they bringing into our destination, and how can we accommodate them? This is the know-how we in the ecosystem provide. I mean, we involve our locals and we provide to the community.

Ged Brown:I think that's really credible. It's interesting to me because in a former role, that I had. I used to speak to, again, mainly ministers for tourism, CEOs of tourism authorities, and I would sit down with them at World Travel Market and ITB with my pen and paper, the diligent note-taker that I am, and I'd say, you know, tell me about, you know, what's your plans for the next 5 years and your visitor aspirations? And they talk through, you know, a big number, you know, we're gonna get another 1.5 billion— million international arrivals. And then I'd say, you know, which markets are your source markets, are you focused on? And they tell me, yeah, we're gonna be focused on this market and this market. How many by air? How many by land? If it was And then what was really interesting is you'd then speak to the airports and you'd get completely different information. Completely different. It really blew my mind that there was such a big disconnect in many cases between the Ministry of Tourism and the Ministry of Aviation, or the airports and the tourism authorities. Is that something that you see, Sascha? You know, you're working with these guys. Is that disconnect still there, or is that old news? Am I talking about something that was from 5, 6 years ago?

Sascha Feuerherd:That's 100% still there. I talked in the beginning about supply and demand. An airline is not deciding by fun where to fly. So naturally, Saudi Arabia is a bit of greenfield, which is— I love that approach because you can shape what is happening. You can flatten out seasonality. You can define areas where you want to get people to. At the end of the day, still, the customer, the passenger will decide if he wants to take on that offer. And if someone that you didn't count with another country decides that this is a beautiful destination, you would not reject them. Many other places are far further developed, and an airline, as I said, in their data-driven approach for the selection of their network, will opt for a place where they can fill the planes with rather good yields. And they would not opt out just for the fun of it and say, I go to a less attractive place where I make less money. So this is perhaps to also be very frank on the positions or roles in the game. Now, the tourism ministry or the different tourism boards have plans. They have a strategy in mind, and the marketing can very much steer that and change travel patterns. And that's the beauty in there, because a destination that at the moment is less frequented and less attractive and less known might become a lot more attractive if well marketed. And then again, it becomes very attractive for an airline to serve that destination. So it's, again, this collaboration is very much of interest, but it's not that we, as consultants to the airline industry, or the airline industry is full of saints that basically say, we are not interested in the money, we're going to places where we're not disturbing. That's not the business model, very difficult to explain to the shareholders.

Ged Brown:When you talk about, you know, the marketing is such an important part of developing a new destination, is the same true then of the low season periods?

Majid Khan:100%.

Ged Brown:You know, a marketing challenge? Because that's what I'm seeing. I'm seeing that as a huge challenge that the tourism authorities, frankly, I don't think they're doing a good enough job on it.

Sascha Feuerherd:Look for mountains. I think 20 years ago, These were ski resorts, and now you go there for taking tours with the kids, for going to the lakes, for taking mountain bike tours. They have developed and tried to flatten out this seasonality very much. There are naturally destinations which have a bit more of a problem. If you're very popular as a beach destination and it's pretty much -5 degrees, it's not as sexy. It changes a little bit of the target audience that you're going for. But yes, that must be a target from all parties. It is also in the interest of the airlines. We're not keen on flying seasonal routes. It costs us more money, it has more risks, it's ramp-up and ramp-down periods.

Ged Brown:It's—

Sascha Feuerherd:that's not what we want.

Ged Brown:I'm very much conscious of time. We've got 9 minutes left, and I had a whole raft of questions. However, I also I asked a lot of my tourism colleagues before I came out here, and I knew I was going to be moderating this panel, and I said, you know, what are the most pressing questions that you would have for this particular audience? So I'm going to skip right down to those questions. So any of you can feel free to jump in on these. I need to make it bigger. Okay, so yeah, good question. How much longer can airlines profit from peak season routes to saturated destinations without reputational risk? It's a good question, isn't it? Anybody want to take that? Not really, not really. Come on, Peter, come on.

Peter Glade:Reputational risk. So you have to see it on both sides of the equation. There seems to be a demand that people want to go to that place, otherwise they wouldn't go. So then they choose your brand over another brand, and you're all having an offer to there, so the reputational risk isn't there. On the destination perspective, that's different. Oh, it's stupid airline A, stupid airline B that is always bringing those stupid tourists into our destination. Is that a reputational risk? Yes. Is it something life-threatening for an airline? Depends on the destination. Usually, the places that we're going to are far more destinations than their origins.

Ged Brown:Yeah.

Peter Glade:So can I live with this reputational risk? I could make it a very clear economical answer and say, yeah, it's something I can live with. Or I take it as an opportunity or as a task to grow a relationship with those people and start engaging in a dialogue, which I do prefer.

Ged Brown:Yeah, I think that's quite a proactive kind of way to deal with it, as well as, you know, presumably once you open that dialogue with them, you can have, you know, conversations about maybe we can dilute what's going on in the peak season with—

Peter Glade:Take Bulgaria as an example. That's always my favorite example if we're talking about seasonal routes. If you want to go from Germany, UK, Switzerland, Austria to Bulgaria, there's like, what, 9 weeks, 10 weeks where it really is good fun, you get good yields, etc. And after that, it's dead.

Sascha Feuerherd:That's it.

Majid Khan:Why is it dead?

Peter Glade:Because the hoteliers are pointing at the airlines, you stop flying. The airlines are pointing at the hotels and they say, well, you're closing. And both are pointing at the destination management and the governments, you have to do something, you have to invest. And everybody's pointing at everybody, nobody's doing anything. But there is a huge opportunity. Come on, how many touristic arrivals do we have in London in November? And don't tell me that the weather in London in November was anywhere close to being—

Ged Brown:No one goes to London for the weather.

Peter Glade:All right, see, see. So what we did in, in 2024, not 2019, 2024, just to make you happy, in the winter season '23-'24, Antalya was the main destination for British package tourism, more than the Canary Islands. And the weather in Antalya in winter is not always beautiful, but what did they do? The hoteliers came together and started to build attractive offers for people that would also work indoors, and suddenly they could keep open the hotels, they could make sure that the workers, you know, they don't have just seasonal contracts but they're still there. It's good for everybody, just think about it and do it.

Ged Brown:Yeah. Yeah, it's an interesting one. I've used this example quite a few times. I was giving a talk in Croatia, it was about 2 years ago, and I was doing the usual blurb about low season tourism and how destinations need to embrace their low seasons and, you know, market them and promote them. And a lady from— I won't say the exact destination— but she said, Mr. Brown, that's all very well, but we're a sun and beach destination. People come here for the sun and the beaches. And I just said, can you be really honest with me? Can you tell me how have you positioned and promoted your destination for the past 30 years? She started smiling. She said, sun and beaches. And I said, you know, and I'm not being a smartass there. You got what you asked for. You need to ask for something different. And this particular destination, by the way, has some of the most breathtaking Roman ruins behind those beaches. And it's like, but they're not telling that story. They're just telling the same old story. And I'm not being hypercritical of that. It's just We've been, in tourism terms, we've been in an industry that's known nothing but year-on-year growth pretty much for 100 years. And that makes you fat and lazy. You're just like, you know what, we just do the same kind of marketing we've always done, and next year there'll be more, and more airlines will come in, and so on and so forth. It's frustrating. Sascha, I've got a question for you because I actually asked this to you beforehand.

Sascha Feuerherd:Okay.

Ged Brown:And I want to know your take on this, and then I will come to you two as well. Is it conceivable that an airline would ever consider cutting a profitable route to support destination sustainability? Is that, you know, if it got to that degree where the overtourism was absolutely utterly horrendous, but there's an airline that's flying in and it's a profitable route, is it conceivable Do you think that an airline would pull out?

Sascha Feuerherd:Very altruistic move for an airline that is, at the end of the day—

Ged Brown:Are they in the business of altruism, airlines?

Sascha Feuerherd:No, not tourism, but altruistic. You would not pull out. It's a clear no. There's a destination, 20 airlines are flying in. Now I have my consciousness that it's overcrowded by tourism, and I decide my airline is not flying to this place anymore. We're going to a place where we're flying half empty and not even covering our operational cost. I would be axed out of my job immediately. So, no, that's not the solution. An airline, and that comes to this consciousness, it's not a blame game. At the end of the day, it's not the airline's fault that there's a beautiful beach or a famous Mona Lisa or something where the people all want to see it. The airline is a means to get there, has a certain responsibility, but is a part of the game of various parties that are interested in the end. And let's not forget that the local industry is earning, and it's not only the 5-star resorts, it's also the hostels, it's all of the parties are earning. You need to have a certain mix. One airline pulling out of an airport just for the consciousness, I think that would be a— it would not even bring you applause.

Ged Brown:And someone else would just enter straight away, obviously, if it's—

Sascha Feuerherd:It's a no. I believe no. A lot is spun in terms of communication and marketing about decisions. At the end of the day, you pull out because you're not— your competition got stronger, and then you claim you do that for the environment.

Majid Khan:No.

Sascha Feuerherd:Okay, clear and easy.

Ged Brown:I suppose any final thoughts? I suppose, you know, what do you see the next 5 years when we're talking about overtourism and we're talking about pushback and we're talking about potentially looking at opening new markets, both destinations and also entering into the low seasons? Generally speaking, how do you see it going over the next 5 years? If we were having this, this exact forum again in 5 years' time, what do you think would have changed?

Peter Glade:I have a hope from an airline perspective, and I mean, now I'm representing a vertically integrated tourism company that I've been working for for 6 months, and before that it was 25 years of pure aviation. But what I really hope is that we will change our approach to network development. So a lot of carriers are still doing network planning based on historic numbers, indirect traffic flows, etc., and we're sitting there very scientifically in an ivory tower and then decide where to fly. I think the real opportunity to, to bring the tourism, to double the tourism in the next— what was it, 20 years? Um, in, in a fashion that would actually be sustainable and not the classical airline— we fly until everybody flies and then we pull out again and find something else until everybody flies and we pull out again— would be to really sit down before we fly and, and, and talk to those people in the destination and really have a joint plan. What is happening with the people that I'm bringing in? If that was a change, then I think as an airline, you would be far more sustainable in your network planning. You have less trial and error. And from a destination perspective, it would also be perfect from a marketing, you know, the first time you come in, everybody has an interest that you're really coming in.

Sascha Feuerherd:Yep, absolutely.

Ged Brown:Majid, 5 years' time?

Majid Khan:5 years' time for the sector?

Ged Brown:You'll be on 150 million nearly.

Majid Khan:Yeah, exactly. Of course, Saudi Arabia is the place to be, 100%. But I would say what's really important is that we spread our tourists. I mean, we see that a lot in Europe. I mean, I know, for instance, when I travel, if it's city ABC, I have one exact spot in mind which I need to see because it's about that exact destination. So I think it's really, really important we try to focus on, okay, how do we spread the— I mean, get the tourists around to the suburbs as well? I fully understand. When, as Sascha also mentioned, if you have 10,000 people middle of the night outside your house, obviously, I mean, you will not like tourists, right?

Peter Glade:No.

Majid Khan:Spreading the tourists, increasing your season, and then focus on local job creation. We know air connectivity that brings people-to-people contact, it creates cultural understanding, and I think it's the job of the stakeholders as well to create that cultural understanding to say, okay, These are the people coming in, and the same for the tourists. Now you are visiting destination ABC, these are the guidelines you need to follow. Bottom line, better understanding, spread your tourists, and create new destinations. We are now trying with Riyadh, actually, the capital of Saudi Arabia, city with 8 million people, so massive, massive catchment area, but we're building clusters. You have So we are recreating the first Saudi state, which was in 1727. So, I mean, the area will be massive. It will be bigger than downtown Paris, a massive, massive area. On top of that, I mean, not too far away, we will have the world's largest Six Flags, I mean, Qiddiya Park. I mean, waterland, roller coasters, the biggest, tallest, fastest, exactly at the same time we are having events in Riyadh. as well. We'll have Sports Boulevard. I mean, the new park, World Cup coming up actually in 2034, which feels like tomorrow. 8 World Cup stadiums will be in Riyadh only. It's really important that you create some experience centers at your exact city and spread the tourists instead of having them only in one place.

Ged Brown:Of course, you could ease the overtourism in Europe by encouraging more people to go to Saudi instead.

Majid Khan:That's exactly what we're doing, by the way. We believe Saudi Arabia is a great I think it's a great alternative. I was looking with my team on numbers here for— we just got a new flight with Wizz Air's XLR to Medina and to Jeddah. From Gatwick, if I'm not wrong, there are around 13, 14 daily flights. We thought, okay, Medina, we have zero. Suddenly, you create a new alternative for the tourists, and that's what we're looking on, simply giving a new alternative and experience.

Ged Brown:Very smart, very smart.

Sascha Feuerherd:Really, the spread that we talked, the development which is heading into the same direction, a little part which is kind of a negative part. What is really desired and everyone wants to see will be crowded, might be costly, but as soon as we learn the experience of a secondary site might be a much better experience for you, your family, and what you have seen than the top sight, I can see that on TV, I can see that somewhere. Once I've learned that this is not worth standing in a queue for 5 hours, I'd rather see something else. And I think in Greece and in every country I've been so far, there are thousands of things to see, not just one. So I think this is— but it's not going to be in 5 years that it's sorted.

Ged Brown:No, but we can make progress towards that. And again, I think the common theme seems to be Making sure all stakeholders are aligned and around the table to make solutions. I'd like to thank very much my wonderful panelists for joining us for this particular conversation. Please show your thanks to our wonderful panelists, and thank you all very much.

Peter Glade:Thank you.

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