Economy Question of conscience Air travel
“Flight shame” revival – The Thunberg scene overlooks these positive travel effects
Status: 20.07.2023 | Reading time: 4 minutes
According to environmentalists, freedom should no longer be limitless above the clouds
Quelle: picture alliance/dpa
Air travel is again attracting increasing criticism from environmental and climate protection groups. Wrongly so, argues the travel industry in a study: According to this, the positive global effects of vacationing on the labor market, migratory pressure, climate and environment outweigh the disadvantages.
In the tourism industry, a good mood is part of the core business. That is why tour operators and brokers are concerned that after the end of the corona lockdown, the desire to travel will return, but so will the debate about flying shame.
“Flygskam” was a term that the Swedish climate protection scene around front woman Greta Thunberg had launched with great success worldwide before the corona epidemic. Since then, many holidaymakers have had a guilty conscience. With the almost complete collapse of the global travel business during the pandemic, criticism of flight shame also disappeared from the headlines. Now she’s back.
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Last week, climate activists of the “last generation” occupied the runways at Hamburg and Düsseldorf airports, preventing holiday airlines from taking off. “Crash landing for climate protection”: Greenpeace made it into many headlines and programs this week with a criticism of “climate-damaging subsidies” that often made flying cheaper than traveling by train.
There is “strong criticism of the tourism industry” in public, says Alexander Dingeldey from the Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University (DHBW).
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It is not entirely clear whether this is already having a negative impact on business: Based on the current booking figures, tourism sales this year are at least at – if not even above – the level of the pre-crisis year 2019. Only: This is mainly due to the increased costs, for example for aviation fuel and other fuels and products that are reflected in travel prices. However, the number of travelers has not yet reached the level of the previous year.
Bad climate conscience or no money?
Measured against the number of bookings up to May, the number of holidaymakers was even around 20 percent below the year before the Corona virus. More recent data are not yet available. If there is no last-minute boom, the travel industry, once accustomed to constant growth, will have to deal with the realization that more Germans will be staying at home again this year, even though the pandemic is over.
Is it just the increased prices? Or are more and more people shying away from long-distance travel because they feel they have to justify it? Does the bad climate conscience mean that many people will stay away from home this year?
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With a meta-study on the positive effects of traveling to other countries, the “Alliance of Independent Travel Companies” (asr) wants to take away the guilty conscience of Germans. The Baden-Württemberg tourism expert Alexander Dingeldey and the think tank “Zukunft der Gastwelt” (DZG) argue in the report that so-called “outbound tourism” in distant countries not only creates jobs and prosperity and thus reduces refugee movements.
The environment is also doing much better, not worse, thanks to holidaymakers. It is true that only part of the tourism expenditure remains in the destination countries themselves. Nevertheless, the sector contributes almost eleven percent to global value creation. Its share of CO2 emissions is only eight percent. Germans spent around 80 billion euros abroad last year.
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In the main tourism regions of poorer countries in particular, the funds make a significant contribution to local added value, political stability and education. “Even in European countries, the income from international tourism is anything but a side income, such as in Croatia or in neighboring Austria,” said DZG board spokesman Marcel Klinge.
The funds not only create direct local employment, but are also distributed across a wide range of regional service providers in the areas of supply, agriculture, medicine and communication. According to the report, many providers are trying to buy products and services locally anyway.
From the benefit of tourism
For example, the all-inclusive Robinson Club Nobilis in Turkey sources 70 percent of all goods and 90 percent of all food locally, and hires 90 percent of its staff locally.
The effect of traveling in terms of environmental protection is also great: because holidaymakers come to see green, unspoilt nature, in many places in emerging countries sewage systems and garbage disposals are being set up in the first place. Wild animals are no longer shot because they have a higher value as a photo object of well-paying national park visitors.
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train, bus, car, plane
Tourism is the driving force behind environmental innovations in many areas, Dingeldey explains as an example: 99 percent of shipping consists of freighters, but the development of clean propulsion systems and fuels comes from the one percent of cruise shipping companies.
The environmental solutions developed in the cruise sector would then be used more and more in the cargo fleets. The aviation industry is also working intensively on climate-friendly fuels and engines. “We achieve great things and don’t have to hide,” is the conclusion of asr President Anke Budde. “There is no reason for flight shame.”
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