TRAVELIN' LIGHT

As the titans of travel and tourism converge on East London’s docklands this week, we dust off our snorkel and speedos for a peek beneath the surface of this multi-trillion-dollar behemoth…

This week’s World Travel Market at the Excel building in London’s docklands was tipped to be the busiest in the event’s forty-five year history.  It certainly ‘felt’ like one of the busiest to me, based on my twenty-nine years’ attendance, but at the very epicentre of this vibrant annual congregation of leisure travel professionals from almost every country on the planet, WTM’s Orange Stage provided a forum for broader perspectives.*

Cui bono?

The economic impact of leisure tourism is undeniable:

The global travel and tourism sector is forecast to contribute US $11.7 trillion to the global economy in 2025, or 10.3% of global GDP**

In 2024 the sector reportedly provided 357 million jobs, around 10% of total global employment**

…But what are the actual benefits (and costs) for communities living and working in and around major destinations?

Tourism Leakage:

The proportion of tourist spending that exits the local economy, rather than circulating within it, varies from destination to destination, for example for India it has been estimated at 40%, Thailand 70% and as much as 80% in some Caribbean countries*** 

Low pay and exploitative employment practices:

‘The tourism and hospitality industries are often characterised as dominated by casual, short-term, precarious low-skilled work, justifying low-wages while disregarding the soft-skills’ ****

Upward pressure on housing prices:

Destinations as diverse as Barcelona, Lisbon and Chamonix have been forced to introduce measures to restrict second homes and holiday lets as rising house prices force locals out of the area. As Le Monde succinctly put it: “French capital of mountaineering bans second home construction: ‘We are losing our soul as we lose residents.’ ”

We bono

I believe it may be useful to simplify the primary psychological benefits of leisure tourism by splitting them into:

a)     Stochastic spot effects, generally referred to as memorable tourism experiences (MTE’s).  As in all other areas of The Business of Pleasure, the challenge is always to deliver an experience so enjoyable, and/or powerful, that it passes from the customer’s short term memory and into their long-term memories.

b)    Trend Upticks. The overall beneficial impact(s) of the overall leisure tourism purchase (vacation, short-break or day trip).

MTEs may be triggered by exposure to, and interactions with, a range of experiences. These might include:

Natural beauty (beaches, mountains, countryside, etc,.)

Culture with a big ‘C’ (e.g. museums, art-galleries and architecture)

Or a small ‘c’, (e.g. cuisine, couture and nightlife)

Activities (e.g. traveling to and from the destination, sports and walks etc.)

In common with most other areas of The Business of Pleasure, the memorability may derive from the power of the experiences in their own right and/or as shared experiences; in this case with members of the visitor’s own party, new or renewed acquaintances among other visitors to the destination, and members of the destinations’ local communities.

In all cases, however, I would argue that there are two directions of travel (pun intended) or drives (ditto).

Discovery:

The desire to discover new experiences is an inbuilt adaptive (evolutionary) drive. It is often accompanied by subsidiary social payoff made possible when the attendee, in the role of early adopter, or pathfinder, shares their discovery with peers and networks.

Nostalgia: 

This doesn't necessarily mean the return to a previously encountered destination, experience or event. It could equally be the desire to recapture, and re-experience a feeling; e.g. a visit to a totally new destination might be driven by the wish to recapture the emotions evoked when first discovering some special place in the past, somewhere which had a powerful, or possibly transformational, impact on either an individual visitor, couple, or larger social group.

When it comes to the more general overall benefits of leisure tourism, new and stimulating environments can (hopefully) raise moods, promote engagement and create a sense of vitality and happiness during and after travel.  But they also can produce direct medical benefits.

Just what the doctor ordered:

A 2025 study of high stress professionals, in this case pharmacists, noted the following:

One of leisure travel’s most immediate psychological benefits is its capacity to reduce perceived stress through environmental detachment and restorative engagement. According to the Biopsychosocial Model of Challenge and Threat, an individual’s appraisal of environmental demands as either a challenge (manageable) or a threat (overwhelming) directly shapes their physiological and psychological responses. Persistent exposure to threat appraisals may activate maladaptive stress responses within chronically stressful work environments, such as pharmacy practice, including heightened cortisol levels, fatigue, and emotional dysregulation. Frequent leisure travelling, by contrast, provides a context for reframing such demands, enabling individuals to psychologically detach from routine pressures and engage in environments that promote safety, novelty, and emotional relief. Frequent travel offers a structured break from occupational responsibilities. It allows for participation in low-effort, intrinsically rewarding activities—such as sightseeing, walking in nature, or cultural immersion—which facilitate emotional decompression and cognitive reset.*****

The Distant Win-Win

As more destinations attempt, like Amsterdam and Copenhagen, to strike a better balance between the economic benefits of leisure tourism and the impact on local communities, my personal hope is that similar mitigations will spread geographically through osmosis, driven by consumer preference, rather than top-down regulation, particularly among the younger, more socially responsible generation cohorts. 

So that (eventually) the invaluable personal benefits of leisure tourism, those memories we take with us to the grave, do not come at the expense of someone else’s life of misery; our annual investment in eternity guided, and guard-railed, by empathy and respect.

DT

7 November 2025

*Summit: Rethinking GDP, Gentrification and Growth, Summit: Geo-Economics. Labour and Human Rights in Tourism Supply Chains.

**WTTC (World Travel and Tourism Council)

***UNWTO (United Nations World Tourism) 2014

****Under the radar? Modern slavery and labour exploitation risks for the hotel industry Tourism Management, June 2024

*****Frequency of leisure travel and psychological well-being in pharmacists: the sequential mediating roles of perceived stress and social support. Shazia Rehman, Jamal Ahmad, Ayesha Khan, Khalid Abdullah Alotaibi. BMC Psychology, August 2025