We need to wake up

Editorial, Travel Weekly, 3/5/2007

H ere's something every travel professional needs to know about global warming: If people believe that travel contributes to global warming, you have a problem.

You could dismiss the Bishop of London as a kooky cleric for suggesting that air travel is sinful. You could dismiss Al Gore's Oscar for "An Inconvenient Truth" as a display of political correctness in La-La Land. And you could dismiss the lyrics of "I Need to Wake Up," Melissa Etheridge's Academy Award-winning song for that documentary, as just another example of feel-good pop.

But you could be right on all counts and still be out of business if people base their buying decisions on the theory that travel's benefits are outweighed by its contribution to global warming.

Consumers increasingly want energy-efficient cars and appliances. They are looking for organic foods and other products that are brought to market with a smaller impact on the environment. The green movement is beginning to move mountains.

Could you have predicted five years ago that corporate giants like Alcoa, Dupont, Bayer, Citigroup and General Electric would be lobbying the world's governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? Or that 10 U.S. CEOs would appeal to President Bush on the eve of his state of the union address to do the same? Or that JPMorgan would launch a "green bond index" for investors that addresses a corporation's risks related to climate change issues?

All these things have happened since Jan. 1, and now Australia is about to ban incandescent light bulbs because they're "bad."

To state the obvious: If people believe that travel is "bad," it's going to get a lot harder to sell it.

Some months ago in this space, we took note of plans by Starwood Capital chief Barry Sternlicht to launch a new luxury hotel brand, called "1," that would incorporate green technology and practices to minimize adverse environmental effects. His goal was to make environmental purity a defining characteristic of the luxury travel experience.

He seemed at the time to be ahead of the times, but times could be changing faster than we think. It might not be long before consumers come to regard environmental purity as a necessity not merely for luxury experiences but for common products such as light bulbs.

We happen to think Al Gore is more right than wrong on the issues, but the real question for travel companies may not be whether Al Gore is right or wrong but whether travel can keep its luster in an age when people look askance at anything that adds carbon to the air.

Changing your light bulbs may be the least you can do. Even if you think it will make no difference to climate change, there are practical reasons why anybody involved in travel should be interested in conserving energy.

For one thing, it is likely that your customers are going to start judging you on it.

For another, the transportation sectors of our industry are still highly dependent on oil. If the travel industry is going to reduce its carbon footprint, there will be limits to what the airlines and cruise lines can contribute in the short term. Our hotels can buy wind power and our motorcoaches can use alternate fuels, but our ships and planes do not yet have those kinds of options.

So far, the travel industry in the U.S. has not been bashed with the same kind of rhetoric that has been bandied about in the U.K. and Europe, but it may only be a matter of time before it has to start defending itself.