What we’d love to see is worry-free travel in its totality, i.e. while safety & security is critical, so too is the beauty in seamless, efficient, friendly and joyful travel.
Looking back at 2016, safety & security was a key issue. We had horrible terror attacks targeting tourists (e.g. Brussels airport, a series of bombs in popular Thai resorts), viral outbreaks (Zika), air accidents (FlyDubai, Egyptair), natural disasters that affected tourism (New Zealand earthquake), political impacts (Brexit, US presidential election), economies (China slowdown) – enough examples to make us choose Towards worry-free travel as the theme of this year-end issue.
Our dream of worry-free travel goes far beyond safety & security. From our perspective, despite the troubles of 2016, the industry in fact has gone stronger in dealing with crises, having year after year learnt to deal better with them. Tourists too have voted with their passports – terror attacks or health scares have not prevented them from travelling. Close to one billion international tourists were recorded in the first nine months of 2016, a four per cent increase over the same period in 2015, according to UNWTO’s latest count.
What we’d love to see is worry-free travel in its totality, i.e. while safety & security is critical, so too is the beauty in seamless, efficient, friendly and joyful travel.
So, to our dear readers, we’d like to wish you not ‘safe travels’ – this year’s common email sign-off – but ‘happy travels” in 2017, when travelling is less of an anxiety and more of uninhibited discovery.
Which is what it should be.
Yours,
Raini Hamdi, Senior Editor (left) and Xinyi Liang-Pholsena, Editor (right)
This article was first published in TTG Asia December 2016 issue. To read more, please view our digital edition or click here to subscribe.
