THE GLOBAL TRAVEL INDUSTRY'S FABULOUS 60 YEAR JOURNEY
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • You Lucky People - the story
  • news & stories
  • Buy You Lucky People

Experience Success - and do it your way!

3/26/2020

1 Comment

 
Picture

The WTTC is predicting disaster - is their disaster your success?

The WTTC is predicting disaster for the global tourism industry. The loss of millions of jobs is on the cards. But is it your tourism industry that is threatened? Or is it the big companies that form the WTTC that are about to take the hit?

This organisation is, after all, just the union of the CEOs of the world's biggest 100 travel organisations. So maybe this disaster just applies to them and it is actually your opportunity that you can see on the horizon rather than your disaster.

True, many, many people will be out of a job over the coming months. But some will see this as a release from corporate shackles - whether they directly work for a big organisation or they are a local DMC, tour guide, transfer company, taxi driver or tourist attraction.

I've been in the travel industry for a very long time indeed and I've seen disaster after disaster (read my book You Lucky People to see the full story! ) and one thing I know for sure is that when the going gets tough you get the sack, not the boss! That's why I stopped working for big companies a long time ago. They never protected me when they were threatened. And I got to make a fabulously fulfilled life in the travel industry.

What I also know is that the travel industry is always full of opportunities for EVERYBODY. There are no barriers to entry if you are prepared to work hard and have some passion in your heart, your mind and your body.

These are not lessons learnt from books or guides or training - these are lessons that I have learnt the hard way over more than half a century in the global industry. With the downs and ups that are a perennial part of our game.

So, if you think that over the next horrible year or so that you may be able to see the travel industry providing a sustainable career for you - here are three other points that you may consider:
The first is that when the Coronavirus cloud is lifted (maybe after your job has gone!) the vast majority of people will want to travel even more.

Secondly big-company, boring homogeneous offers never inspired the customers. It was the advertising copy that got them to book dreams that turned into the boring same old, same old…

Thirdly the industry has already set itself up for massive customer-demanded change. Why do you think that TUI, after 50 years or so is now not a tour operator? TUI, by far the most sustainably successful travel organisation in the world is now... an 'Experience Provider'. They are just one of the first-moving trailblazers in a totally new tourism economy.

Inclusive tours and cruises are old, dull and totally out of fashion; they are on the way out. The Experience Economy is on the way in. And the great thing about the Experience Economy is that it is not dominated by the top 100 companies that until now have controlled the tourism industry - in other words not the WTTC.

The Experience Economy is totally - and wonderfully - fragmented: at the moment there are some 200,000 micro-organisations run by people following their personal passions and creating some $200 billion of revenue.

If you love travel and all of its opportunities; If you have a passion to do anything independently; If you want a sustainable career rather than a soul-destroying job; if you want to be your own master or mistress and want to dance to your own tune rather than someone else's - the Experience Economy is for YOU! If I can do it so can you!

The travel industry is open to everybody who wants to make their mark …not by preaching and pretending but by practical doing…

Valere Tjolle
Valere is the author of 'You Lucky People' the story of travel - the world's most delightful and devastating industry. Find out more about it HERE


1 Comment
Andre Leavitt link
4/28/2020 08:26:35 am

Great article. I had the opportunity to travel with Valere through La Romagna Italy, in the Fall of 2016. This area of Italy would fit well into the experience economy. No crowds, amazing small towns & real people who welcomed tourists. This was the Italy that existed in 1980s when I first visited.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Valere Tjolle is the travel and tourism insider. An entrepreneur, consultant, developer and journalist, he has been in at the beginning of almost every tourism development for the last sixty years. There is no one better placed to expose the seedy side of tourism nor its enormous opportunities to unite people across the globe.

    Archives

    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Tourism in the 2020s – will it delight or devastate the human race?
New book starts at the beginning and predicts the next 60 years of tourism.

 
 
In 1960 did we believe that an international travel industry would increase from just 25 million passengers a year to 1.5 billion?
 
Did we believe that the economic opportunities promoted by dictator Franco’s government would sweep the world, promoted by the World Bank?
 
Did we believe that travel would become both a friend and a foe to many destinations and that it would help to threaten our Earth’s ecosystems, cultures, economies, society as a whole?
 
If we didn’t believe all that then, what do we believe now?
 
You Lucky People sets out the past, the present and a future for tourism - all very irreverently!
 
Could global tourism be totally subject to Chinese demands, could it become entirely virtual, could it be so hampered by world disturbances, diseases, violence in destinations and other curses that it could change its nature dramatically. Could it actually be stopped because of its environmental and social damage?
 
Or ... could it be managed harmoniously and effectively by local destinations and marketed by really responsible business entrepreneurs so that its great benefits could be available to many more millions?
 
The author, Valère Tjolle, has been in the travel industry for almost all of these last 60 years. His story is that of real experience in the industry all over the world, and in-depth understandings and involvements with all the innovations and transformations over that period.
 
It was his annual Sustainable Tourism Report that pointed to the growth potential of the ‘Sharing Economy’ and tipped every other major development; his Greenwash Report that rated companies and activities according to their actual sustainability performance; his Global Top 100 Sustainable Destinations that picked out the real destination winners
 
From the ‘Mom and Pop’ businesses of the 50s through the devil-may-care entrepreneurs of the last decades of the 20th century to the massively powerful tech businesses of today - the real story of the travel industry is pithily portrayed with humour and realism.
 
‘You Lucky People’ is not an academic history of the industry - it is a warts-and-all story of a deep insider’s experience at the heart of the industry.
 
Come for the ride! See it here:

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • You Lucky People - the story
  • news & stories
  • Buy You Lucky People