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TIQT special: As all-inclusive demand rises, is it sustainable?
Friday, 31 May, 2011
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Sarah Johnson, managing director at PR, marketing and events company Lotus UK, gives us her take on TravelMole’s Travel Industry Question Time, held this week in London.
At the Travelmole Travel Industry Question Time this week, latest statistics from Yahoo (location sponsors) showed demand for all-inclusive has increased threefold year on year.
Love it or hate it, consumers are obviously driving demand for all-inclusive holiday products.
In a session where big business, charitable and environmental associations and niche travel companies were all represented, the debate was fierce.
TravelMole MD Graham McKenzie opened the conversation with the words “Travel broadens the mind”. But spending two weeks in a 1000 room all-inclusive hotel that could be in anywhere in the world, may not.
Mike Reed from The Travel Foundation suggested this is why all-inclusive is becoming the “lightning rod” for mass tourism.
TUI and Sandals outlined their commitment to sustainable good practice through charitable initiatives such as The Sandals Foundation and commitment to defining good code of practice with ABTA and their Travellife initiative.
Large hotels owned and managed by the tourism giants offer local employment, income, monetary exchange and boosts GDP. When collaboration with local stakeholders is established, an example being the new Sandals property in the Bahamas, hotels can operate successfully, engaging support and commitment of local communities.
However, Patricia Barnett from Tourism Concern quoted examples of tourism ministers feeling obliged to nurture mass tourism to generate employment and hoteliers being forced to switch to all inclusive to maintain commercial agreements. An uncomfortable power struggle.
Destinations originally renowned for all-inclusive such as the Caribbean typically have a low cost of living, low levels of infrastructure and need to generate revenues for their community through tourism.
But how do corporations ensure that local cultural values are upheld when the employment is dominated by European or US corporation culture?
When the common denominator is price, and the cost of an average night in an all-inclusive hotel is €20, the question was asked if travel corporations are becoming the Tesco of travel?
Paul Riches from You Travel raised the point that there is good and bad practice in all forms of tourism.
The quality of offering from TUI and Sandals is high. Both outlined data on customer satisfaction scores that were excellent and families in particular find them convenient, good value and safe.
TUI’s Jane Ashton reinforced the point that customers in all-inclusive hotels take more excursions and exchange more foreign currency than non all-inclusive customers.
But a recent report from the Travel Foundation studying the socio-economic impact of an all-inclusive hotel on its environment showed that only 11% of the value chain benefits the local economy.
There is a demand for all-inclusive and as Derek Moore pointed out, it isn’t going to go away.
The debate goes on. There is good and bad tourism, good and bad mass tourism, good and bad profit and good and bad all-inclusive.
What is clear is that there is much more work to be done to fully understand the impact of the all-inclusive hotels on the local infrastructure and to manage the process to the benefit of all concerned.
Travel Industry Qusetion Time is sponsored by Yahoo, Getabed.co.uk and Amadeus
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