Worldwide tourism, over decades had worked on a fundamental truth that has proven to be problematic, but driven by a strong and yet extremely simple idea: more is good. More of planes, more rooms in hotels, more people coming, more money. It was a volume-production machine, a world-wide conveyer belt which took masses of human beings out of their abodes into a made-to-measure, and frequently sanitised, replica of a small portion of the abodes of other human beings, offering relief and supplying, far too much of the time, the mere surface of an eyeblink. I see the most promising and the most dangerous nature of this pattern in Lahore, this city with thousands of years of history that I can see it by my lens. Standing on a cool evening as the floodlights one by one pick out the gigantic arches of the Badshahi Mosque you can read in the eyes of a foreign visitor a moment of human communication to a common heritage of the world. However, the stress is also observable on a busy weekend afternoon when more people turn the historic quarter into a living, breathing place as well as a theme park, with its highly sensitive social and physical fabric creaking under the pressure of the footsteps. We are undergoing, in this moment, a tremendous, and long-overdue transformation, a world shift between the culture of mass consumption, and a new world order of conscious contribution.
The rifts in the previous paradigm were apparent over a long time, even before the worldwide events that obliged a global time out and pause to take a look back and reflect together. Overtourism had become the industry wound most in the visible position. News of places such as Venice and Barcelona snarled in crowds, their citizens displaced by sky-rocketing rents and the destruction of local culture was also displayed to us. The irrational chase of the ideal Instagram image resulted in trampling of delicate eco systems and desecrating of sacred places. This was not only culturally exploitative; it was a disaster to the environment. The carbon footprint of mass air travel, the huge waste the cruise lines and all inclusive resorts produce, strains on the local water and energy systems were all expenses that were not on the balance sheet. Moreover, the economic dream of tourism could in many cases become a delusion. The sector was dominated by huge foreign owned companies in most of the destinations. Currency flowed in and out of the place in a rush and very little was left in the pockets of the local communities who provided the labour and the cultural landscape against which the tourists came to have the picture taken. This was an unsustainable structure that had a history of unsustainable growth and its failure was not an eventuality but a question of time.
Future, the one we are rapidly creating in 2025, is being planned to revolve around a sequence of dramatic changes in philosophy. The first and the most critical one is the shift toward regenerative model instead of the extractive one. The concept of sustainability of doing something that makes no harm or leaving an environment as you found it is no longer sufficient. Regenerative travel is an even bigger question: How do we improve places, more than we take? It is a radical conceptualization of the role of the traveler as he or she goes beyond being a consumer of travel to becoming a steward. In reality, this implies that a new form of tourism is being developed. We can already find tour operators who include conservation activities in their trip concepts and part of a tour to the northern mountains of Pakistan may end up in ensuring the maintenance of some of the hiking trails or engaging in the area in one of the local reforestation programs. Hotels are no longer being designed as green-efficient, but also with the view of being dynamic parts of the local ecosystem, as restorers of wetlands, generators of wildlife corridors and local organic agriculture in the kitchen. To the traveler it will be identified by going out to find these businesses and realizing that the cost of their visit is both a direct, positive contribution to the life and well being of the destination.
This ecological spirit is directly coupled with economic reconfiguration, in other words, replacing an orientation of simple quantity with value and to depth. The successfulness of the destination is no longer the criteria by the number of people coming in but rather how much they give positively. One backpacker who spends two weeks in Lahore, lodges in an inn run by locals, learns about cooking by doing a course with a local family, buys textiles directly off of one of the weavers of the Walled City, and hires a local student as a guide can infinitely benefit the local economy compared to a group of a busful of tourists who spends six hours in a city and eats fast food in a foreign chain restaurant and buys the mass-manufactured souvenir in a giant emporium before leaving. This new paradigm is all about longer, slower, more involving travel. It helps to induce visitors to reside somewhere, to learn rhythms of it, and to become a temporary member of the place. To destinations it implies a change in the marketing, as it is no longer about broadcasting some generic images of well-known world-famous landmarks: it is all about sending more in-depth stories and appealing to that particular type of travelers that is interested in forging a true connection, as opposed to rather ticking the box of visiting such and such sights.
To help support this increased linkage, we can now see the very nature of travel itself beginning to change, the passive itinerary had been replaced by active immersion. The new model is learning and doing, the old model was about seeing. The redefined tourist industry is emerging to be a medium of life long education. Rather than visiting simply the historical site, a traveler is increasingly enquiring about the potential of visiting the workshops of those artisans who revive its traditional crafts. Visiting Lahore may not just mean taking a glimpse of the renowned tile work, it may also mean carrying out a kashi-kari workshop to familiarize one with the process involved in the craft. Visiting the countryside may mean spending some time in a farm and understanding sustainable agricultural techniques. There is increased appetite of authenticity and skill-building that this experience of travel caters. It makes the journey a much more interactive and interesting event in which both parties, the visitor and the host, will learn knowledge, culture, and skills and will have a much more respectful and empowering experience.
This trend towards authenticity and depth is being driven by a geographical spread of the tourism business, as the over-run hotspots become cluttered and instead the second and third tiers of destinations have become attractive destinations. Tourism has been very concentrated over the years, creating heavy burdens on some selected locations leaving much unexplored lands that are as interesting as the others. Technology is currently making a very significant contribution to ending this imbalance. AI-driven smart travel apps are shifting into something more than booking apps but rather smart discovery apps. They will know which a traveler is interested in whether it is history, the food, textiles, or outdoor adventure, and suggest some lesser known destinations and experiences which will suit this interest. The tourist visiting a country such as Pakistan may be advised to avoid a busy month or season in Hunza and move to the beautiful unvisited valleys of Chitral or a visitor to Lahore may be advised to complement it with a trip to the ancient city of Harappa. It has the effect of spreading the economic benefits of tourism more equally, generating new tourism opportunities in rural and less well known locations and removing some of the pressure on vulnerable internationally-known destinations. It enhances the traveling experience and makes the person learn and discover something more unique and individual, not the beaten path of a touristic place.
Finally, all the changes can be summarized under a single theme which is the strengthening of the hyper-local. The future of tourism is at the place where the local communities become the center of the industry not as the passive receivers of the industry impact, but the main builder and beneficiaries of it. It implies promoting the locally owned business operations, including guesthouses and restaurants, tour guides, and transport services. It entails making indigenous people sovereign custodians of their cultural heritage, whether through the dissemination and display thereof. It is about establishing the platforms, where local storytellers, artists, chefs and historians can connect with the visitors in person to share the world through their voices. Once members of any community have a sense of real ownership and pride in its tourism sector, they become its greatest champion. The service is more authentic, the experiences become more real, and the whole ecosystem is strengthened. The tourist, in his turn, is repaid with a connection, which is human and direct, a real insight of another form of existence. This new industry none longer involves a primeval giant worldwide machine delivering itself to the destinations, but worldwide web of communities that decide to open doors in a sustainable, respectful and mutually enriching manner. The path ahead is path of intent, where we realize that travel is a privilege, and with said privilege comes the responsibility of being a force of good, and leaving the world and the people’s in it, better than when we came.
This is a great responsibility to be a source of good and it cannot be done with good intentions alone. It requires a major re-education of all members of the tourism system, backed up by new instruments and a new value language. It is not only the reshaped industry that entails moving around to different places; it is moving around in the way how they prepare, how they engage, and how they reflect. The role of a traveler is in the most advanced transitional stage moving away through being a passive consumer to the active and knowledgeable co-gener artist of his/her experience. This change starts way before the stuffing of a bag. As the importance of education before the trip increases, pre-trip education platforms emerge and provide an immersive online course on the history, cultural etiquette, and the basics of a destination. An example is a tourist who is looking to visit Lahore may take a couple of weeks to familiarize himself with the usages of the Mughal architecture, the simple greetings of Urdu, the rich history of the Punjab region. This training alters essentially the character of their arrival. They come not as a clean slate hoping that they are going to be entertained, but as a guest who knows a bit more who is eager to argue the place that they are visiting on a higher level where they are respected.
Such redefinition of the role of the traveler is codified in numerous destinations in the form of the introduction of pledges or pacts, an idea first launched in such states as Palau. Just imagine that you enter the airport and you are asked to sign some kind of a Lahori Pledge, which is a beautifully designed commitment being done on behalf of the future generations of the city. In there you would pledge to obey local customs, to safeguard the heritage sites, to patronise local stores, and to be gentle on the environment. It is not a binding contract, as much as a strong mind game. It instantly creates a different relationship between host and visitor which is a relationship of mutual respect and joint responsibility. It changes the thinking of being entitled to being a privilege, it reminds the person that they are a guest in the residence of another family and that residence is worthy of respect.
Moreover, the trip of the evolved traveler does not stop on his arriving back home. They join the feedback and the marketing loop of the new tourism ecosystem. That becomes their role of being an ambassador. With a more complex knowledge of the location, they can tell about something more than the beauty at the surface of the monument. They promote the boutique family operated guesthouse in which they stayed, they became the promoters of the artisan in which they purchased a hand craft and they review and op-ed and contribute to sites that gives priority and assesses good environmental and social friendly travel. They refute the usually deforming magnifier of mass media, offering the real, humanely sized picture. This post-travel lobbying is essential; not only does it aid in generating the positive feedback loop of conscious travelers sharing memorable experiences with other conscious travelers that has an enriching effect on the individual and empowering in the host society.
Such transformation of the traveler requires a similar change amongst the tourism operators. The conventional travel agent is turning out an anachronism. Instead, we are getting the expert curator and the specialist in small niches. They are smaller corporations who are sometimes locally situated and have strong, genuine roots in the area where they are operating. They do not sell generic, one size fits all packages. Rather, they have highly specific tours available to small groups on a certain interest basis. One may specialize in textile tours in the rural villages of Sindh and Punjab, another in food tours of the regional interpretations of Pakistani food and a third on architectural tours of the Mughal and Sikh heritage sites. These curators are the bridge between the curious travelers and real local experiences through a respectful, sustainable way.
These new operators are having a currency; transparency. They offer more than the uniqueness of its tours, it is also their ethical practices which can be verified. One of the most important innovations is related to the impact report. A traveler may be informed at the end of a journey how its money has been used to benefit the local community broken down to the smallest details. It may explain that 40 percent of their rate went straight to the family-owned accommodations, 20 percent to local guides and local transportation, 10 percent to the workmen they stopped at, 10 percent as a direct contribution to a local school or a heritage conservation fund. Radical transparency establishes massive trust in the system and further lets the travelers make informed decisions to choose the producers with whom their values align. It also converts the monetary exchange of a visit into the straightforward venture into the welfare of the host place.
Technology, which had caused disruption by facilitating the advent of mass travel which was unsustainable, is being used in a different way to support a better, conscious model. The newly emerging generation of travel technology is not just about finding the lowest air fare, or the best rated place to stay. Artificial intelligence is also used to develop individual strategies of trip organization in keeping with the values outlined by the user. A travel assistant based on AI may be able to guide a user through a journey where they can leave the smallest possible carbon trail and buy in the establishments owned by women and a chance to attend some voluntary activities. It can serve as a real-time coach, giving subtle reminders and hints to act more responsibly, e.g., the suggestion of a local restaurant instead of a restaurant chain or the information about a local tradition to a tourist, who is about to visit a religious shrine.
The blockchain technology is also being incorporated in the tourism supply chain in order to fight leakage in the economy and transparency. Well, imagine purchasing a hand-made pottery in Lahore market. Holding your phone to a QR code on the object would see a history of that object: who made it and what they were paid, in which local cooperative it was bought and how much goes straight back into a community development fund. This technology eliminates the guessing game and allows consumers to patronize those businesses that are really ethical and fair. At the same time, Virtual and Augmented Reality are also used to save vulnerable locations. Physical access to a small, fragile, ancient tomb may have a daily quota of people who visit, in order not to overwork it, but a beautiful and realistic VR experience may enable millions of people to virtually tour such a tomb. AR on-site has potential to add historical knowledge and replications to the existing view of a visitor of a ruined site with ADDITIONAL INFORMATION and detail with no physical damage of intrusive signage.
Such thorough transformation makes governments and destination management organizations (DMOs) reconsider their success measures. The main objective was to attain more arrivals over the past several decades. This is being done by a more full-fledged approach. A new key performance indicator, the so-called Tourism Well-being Index, is currently developed, and this indicator will measure what really counts. As opposed to tracking the tourist expenditure solely, this index follows how much of the same the local economy keeps. It scans the satisfaction of residents with tourism at a regular basis by sentiment-analysis. It monitors the well being of the local ecosystems, the conditions of heritage sites, and the livelihood of local customs. Success is not only a larger figure any more, but a much healthier, happier and fairer interrelation between a place and its visitors.
With this new model of measurement, DMOs have an opportunity to practice beyond being mere marketers like they used to and be strategic managers of the available resources in their destination. They can adopt dynamic pricing to popular attractions to control throngs of people or use the revenue generated by rigidly maintained limits of entry to souped-up natural areas to protect them. What is most important about it is that it promotes the investment in a so-called un-tourism which are actually projects that make a place a better place to live in first and fore most and with the realization that there will be wonderful places to visit because a place where I would love to live in happens to be a wonderful place to visit. That will imply putting money into the public transport system, building additional green areas, investing into local arts and culture, and investing into small enterprises. These projects augment the quality of life of the natives, and at the same time help make the experience of visitors more genuine and enjoyable. It is the establishment of the new social contract on the possibility of global travel, which is an unspoken pact between everyone. Travelers accept to visit the world with curiosity and respect. The industry commits itself to transparency and equity of operation. And host societies are willing to share their homes in a fashion that is sustainable, as well as, genuine. And this is what the future of travel will be–not an industry as such, but a potent tool to help people to understand one another, to preserve their own cultures and contribute to the health of the world.
