Tourism into the future - towards 2020, and beyond

Abstract

In the future the tourism industry is likely to be affected by at least five key global forcing factors - population, geopolitics, economics, technologies, and the natural environments, and it will find new ways to strategically position across its global market. It will likely adopt multiple virtual, and physical, integrated value-adding strategies and approaches. Targeting the tourist of the future will involve an array of response-driven approaches across a range of markets, market levels and localities. Many of these changes will be driven by new technologies creating a new era of cybertourism. It is essential that the tourism industry position itself as a strategic early mover - planning, trialling and incorporating emerging ideas and technologies, and applying multiple market strategies, to deliver new business options such as ‘e-tourist houses’. Such ideas will generate new streams, thereby further strengthening the industry’s global competitiveness into the future. This paper examines a range of issues that are likely to impact and to some extent the future directions of the tourism industry.