Young leaders step forward at Phocuswright Europe 2023

A surprising thing happened on the first day of the 2023 Phocuswright Europe conference in Barcelona.

During a summit of young leaders that helped kick off the annual travel conference Monday morning, moderator Aurélie Krau asked participants if they believed concerns over sustainability would depress the appetite for travel in coming years. Then she asked them to separate based on their answers. Of the about 30 travel professionals under the age of 35, only three stood alone on the side of climate pessimism.

“I was surprised,” Krau, the founder of #MissionNomad and a frequent speaker on travel tech, said afterwards. “Because I know business travel is not the same at all.”

Yet the outcome might not have had as much to do with climate pessimism as travel optimism – or perhaps the resolve of a generation of professionals who, having already come through COVID-19 and all it meant for travel, feel prepared to take on almost any challenge.

Where some see problems in change, they see opportunities.

“We see changes are happening right here, right now,” said Marta Ladutko, director of commercial operations at Emerging Travel Group. “Of course, during COVID we all had very dramatic drops of sales and travel. Right now, we see travel is getting back, and it’s getting even higher than before COVID. All the COVID limitations are now off. People can plan their travel more in advance. Our businesses are now back on track.”

Krau sees good things in that resilience.

“How I see this new generation is they are very observant about what opportunities they can create,” Krau said. “The pandemic actually served them. It made them more creative and [emerge] as a solution-driver.”

During her opening remarks, Krau told the group not to be shy about speaking up with their ideas for such solutions.

“It’s quite interesting to be at that intersection where you feel that a lot’s going to happen in the industry and to kind of try to steer and drive that change,” she said. “That’s something very characteristic for a young leader. Because you’re always at the beginning of something. You have a unique perspective from whatever vantage point where you are, and this is what we want to help you realize during this event.”

Providing more insight into the industry along with valuable networking opportunities is what drives the program.

Participants heard about travel trends from Phocuswright researchers, advice on implementing artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT, branding themselves and their companies as well as pitching their ideas to investors.

Among the tidbits doled out by Rod Cuthbert, the founder and former CEO of Viator, was not to get too swept up in the wave of people proposing to use generative AI to take over the planning for travel.

“I am quite certain that some companies will try to use AI to shorten the planning process, and I believe that will be a mistake because it reduces the amount of time people are spending in the positive planning process,” Cuthbert said. “Anticipation really plays a crucial role in the long-term satisfaction of a consumer in the leisure travel they consume. The more time they spend anticipating it, the better their experience and the better their memory of the vacation will be.”

Following his presentation, Cuthbert spoke about the opportunities travel’s young leaders now face.

“Over the last couple of years, the industry really has matured a lot, and COVID sort of had the impact of cleaning out the industry to a certain extent, leaving major, well-funded players in a stronger position. I think the impact of that was the industry became more mature, more quickly,” he said. “Then you get the arrival of the AI tools, and it creates a set of new opportunities, specifically for companies that can employ that technology to disrupt and innovate. I don’t think we know how yet, exactly. We just know that there’s a new tool available and that new tool has significant potential.

“We’re going to see some young, unheard-of companies adopt that tech and do things that are challenging and disruptive. But I think anyone who tries to guess right now what those things will be is betting at long odds.”

Sustainability and the rapid pace of change also came up during the afternoon sessions at the conference, which continues through Wednesday.

Backed by a slide that showed carbon emissions estimates on Google Flights, Stephen King, the vice president of sustainability solutions for Visa Europe, spoke of the growing sense of responsibility among consumers and companies to do something. He wasn’t ready to predict when seeing flight emissions might be as commonplace as calories on food nutrition labels, but it doesn’t seem far off.

“This has happened relatively fast,” he said. “It’s sort of been brewing for a couple of years, but certainly in the last six months to a year it seems to be popping up everywhere. I’m not sure exactly where this is going to go, but it’s a much faster arc than say something like [counting] calories on food.”

For Biby Notten and Bianca Tirsin, two of the three young leaders who worried about climate change’s effects on travel, the need for more action is self-evident.

“Right now, if you look in New York City, [its skies are] orange,” Notten said, referencing the smoke from Canadian wildfires that covered much of the eastern seaboard in the United States last week. “If you can wholeheartedly say that won’t impact your decision to travel at a certain time, you’re joking. It seems kind of silly not to think that will impact your choice to travel at that moment.”

They, too, were surprised at how the room was divided by the question. “I couldn’t believe the disparity there,” Notten said. “I thought at a minimum we’d be divided 50-50.”

But they attributed the outcome more to an interpretation of the question than a reflection on their generation’s attitudes toward sustainability. “If you’re in the hospitality industry you see it,” said Notten, the vice president of client relations with hospitality marketing firm Spherical. “Climate change is happening.”

“It’s not a fiction,” added Tirsin, president and founder of travel management company Elite Travelers.

For them, the call for action they see in the travel sector isn’t so much about optimism or opportunities.

“I think, it’s an obligation,” Notten said. “I feel for the generations to come. If I don’t contribute to this change and I don’t contribute to sustainability, then I’m part of the problem. Our generation, they’re taking it less than a choice, it’s an obligation that we have to this planet. Our generation is leading that, and we’re creating the awareness.”

Tirsin agreed “100 percent.”

“For me, besides the obligation, it’s about leaving something behind me for future generations,” she said. “It’s also an obsession for me. I love to travel. I want to see the world. Climate change? Bring it on. I would do everything in my power and use all the technology that we are building to try to make a difference.”