28 Jun The next thing..

100 days into the pandemic it’s fair to say that the world has changed.

While the recovery may have setbacks and restarts, we will move forward. In time, we will get our tourism and hospitality industry workers back on the job, our businesses operating, and our destinations welcoming visitors again. There is a desire by many to rebuild our damaged industry as quickly as possible, recreating it the way it was. But just coming back the same isn’t good enough.  I am encouraged by the chorus of voices calling to take time, during this unwanted time-out, to change tourism for the better. That won’t be easy – particularly as we scramble to get back on our feet. Studies have shown that only a few small businesses come back from disaster better than they were before the event. It is not easy to bounce back better. Yet – that is must be our goal.

It is time to be realistic about the challenges of the coming decades and to take responsibility for our future. While “covid-19 may be climate change at warp speed” (Wagner, Mar.10, 2020), perhaps the most important thing is to remember that we’ve known about the risk of both climate change and a global pandemic for a long time. For a long time, both possible challenges seemed far off and hard to imagine. We had time to change, to respond, to prepare, and we didn’t. The massive changes that addressing these types of challenges just didn’t seem possible, until we did it. At the very least we’ve learned the world can change.

Let’s hope that from the tragedy of Coronavirus, we learn that we must act before the worst of the climate crisis is upon us.