VOLCANIC ASH: Sustainable Tourism Help or Hindrance?

Forgetting about the monumental Two billion dollar ballsup – the ASH travel trauma may be able to help the sustainable tourism movement

“Planet Strikes Back” cried eTurboNews, maybe that’s going a bit far but they certainly have a point. The Icelandic ash cloud has cost the industry at least US$2bn or €1.5bn so far and there are still thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded. And airplanes well out of their patterns, so all the bills, and the full costs have yet to come to roost.

It’s no wonder that big industry chiefs are either numb or apoplectic with rage. As Peter Long of TUI said “It was a shambles” SEE: news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8635833.stm


The industry and the politicians have divided into three camps – those that are genuinely damaged, paying the bills and trying to help, those that are trying to make a fast buck out of a crisis, and those who are turning a short term disaster into a sustainable opportunity.

The sad fact is that this charade could have happened nowhere else in the world other than Europe. In the US, for instance, this particular sort of challenge is up to the airlines to manage, the authorities simply inform them of the presence of volcanic ash. It’s up to them to determine their own action.

However, like everything else in tourism, there are losers and winners.

Winners? Yes – and for once there were sustainable tourism winners, for instance:

The ‘Man in Seat 61’ was sitting pretty – the specialist rail travel site had OVER A MILLION HITS in the month. The GREEN TRAVELLER site apparently had at least three times as many hits as usual. Flightless Travel got, apparently, 700% more hits on their site.

Eurostar made an extra 30,000 seats available at £89 one way that’s getting on for £3m of extra revenue. And Deutsche Bahn pulled in a fortune Thousands of coach companies, too cashed in on this passenger feeding frenzy.

Good Samaritans Lonely Planet gave FREE downloads for 13 x £5 city guide iPhone apps to help stranded tourists– at least 3million of them were downloaded in 3 days.

Plus, of course the hassle further demonstrated the efficacy of land and sea travel so more money was placed in the sector and a couple of really big deals were done indicating what travel and tourism may look like in a few years time:

Deutsche Bahn is to pay £1.5bn for UK coach and train operator Arriva see:online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100422-703235.html and see also our story www.travelmole.com/stories/1140790.php

And in a small deal with big potential Streetcar, the UK’s biggest car club operator, has been taken over by US rival Zipcar in a $50m deal that will extend its dominance of the booming car-share London market.

The market is moving and within just a few years public organizations like Deutsche Bahn and private organizations like Stagecoach could easily be offering integrated transport solution(air, ship, coach, rail, car, bike) taking full benefits from sustainability.

Consolidation looks closer and closer. Who would bet against a few very big entities offering seamless train/coach/ship/hotel travel and reservations solutions within 5 years?

What a lot of damage a volcano can do… to our preconceptions!