Where and how will you #TravelTomorrow?

"By staying home today, we can travel tomorrow”. The hashtag #TravelTomorrow encapsulates this message of solidarity and hope, through which the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) calls for shared responsibility among travellers and the tourism sector around the world to deal with the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

COVID-19 switched travel off, more or less over night. Whilst many talk of the silver linings for biodiversity and conservation, pointing to the dolphins swimming through the canals of Venice and the leatherbacks coming back to nest on beaches in Thailand, we cannot forget the loss of livelihoods and ensuing pain for the millions employed in the tourism sector across the world.

The global pandemic has also made evident the close links between tourism and conservation. Many conservation projects have lost essential tourism funding and projects all over the world are faltering. Our own biodiversity management project which has always been highly reliant on tourism is enormously impacted.

For now, whilst the world pauses and we come to terms with the new reality, many are making plans for tourism’s recovery in the future. But what does this future look like? Will people be more mindful and travel more consciously? Will people be so desperate to get out, they will travel at any cost? Will people travel at all?

In order for us to start putting pen to paper and plotting out recovery scenarios and making plans for the future —> we wanted some answers to these questions. Where and how will you #TravelTomorrow? When we have some answers, I believe we will be in a much better position to plan.

If we get sufficient data, we believe it will be useful for many — tourism businesses, NGOs, government entities, destination management organisations (DMOs) — please do share the survey generously.

We will write a paper on our findings and both the paper and our data will be made publicly available. If you have specific questions or thoughts, please leave them in the comments section below.

Thank you so much for taking part. Stay safe.

English: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/GJZ8TCH

Malay: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/G6KWK8B

Mandarin: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/7JSD678