Was this it? What, in responsible tourism, ethical business, and more spiritual circles, has been talked about for years. The Tipping Point. The potential paradigm shift. Getting to where we’ve wanted to be? What happens now?!

Is coronavirus a coincidence? No, whichever way we look at it, whether consumption or conspiracy, Covid-19 is man-made. We have created it and the conditions for it to spread.

The hamster wheel stopped. The world took a break.

Has one issue ever affected so much of Earth at once? Whoever we are, wherever we are, we were all been locked down: a more level playing field than ever before, globally.

It was indiscriminate. We’re all vulnerable (though some – those at the bottom of the pyramid – more than others). And like all traumas and vulnerability, we can choose to shrink from it, or grow from it: to paraphrase Rumi, ‘The light is through the wound’.

We need to take responsibility for the global trauma: Respons-ability – the ability to respond. The question is, do we?

We can choose to try and return to ‘normal’ and buckle to the rat race, life at breakneck speed, the advertising, the ‘stuff’, the ‘noise’…

Or we can take the opportunity to choose to leave behind what we learnt we don’t like or miss, and take up the new potential: Evolve as nature does and start a whole new cycle, with better versions of ourselves, of our lives. More simple and satisfying, healthier and happier:

Better connection

We found that take away the commute, and we get community. Empathy, kindness, of doorstop deliveries of run-out eggs, & the welcoming warmth of the neighbourhood Whatsapp.

Better tranquility

Hearing the birdsong, seeing wildlife return to quiet streets. I’d even lived next to a children’s school farm for years and didn’t know due to general city noise. Then I woke to the baas of sheep!

Better views

The drop in pollution in cities worldwide, never-before-seen skies without contrails.

Better value

Of keyworkers, so desperately underpaid for so long. Of lifestyles. Of freedom.

Better travel

Did the impossibility of travel make us value it, and its workers, more? Can we not only continue to support the vulnerable, but extend that to holiday destinations’ poverty? Can we come to value tourism not for its frivolous leisure or at best contribution to economy, but for its powerful regenerative abilities in sustainable development?

We don’t need new bucket lists, we just need to turn tourism to deliver on existing Global Goals. We foresaw three phases:

The Short Haul

At first, we expected to see the result of forced behaviour change, which could bounce back as soon as safe to do so:

Health (SDG3) was the priority, with our focus on awareness, on the physical and on the local.

We were happy to be travelling locally or later domestically, conscious of social distancing – finding weekends of overtourism crowds or cruise quite repulsive – as we turned to spatial rural escapes – great for more sustainable tourism.

Visitors to cities (SDG11) we expected to be more local, supporting excursions and activities, but accommodation to face less demand (meaning some great deals), and more cleaning. With unknown health and safety standards and less demand, AirBnBs could turn back to local housing stock, no longer adding to inflationary pressures.

More airline check-ins we expected to follow Emirates with pre-flight virus tests, paving the way for routes to open up – though demand would take a big hit for a long time yet – by when a vaccine certificate become as valuable as the passport.

Facemasks became normal travelling around, obligatory in places, no longer the preserve of Japanese, Chinese and Koreans. The Naomi Campbell obsession anti-bac wiping airplane seats in latex gloves was an acceptable norm, and some wanted spare seats per person for physical distancing – willing to pay higher pricing (which could prepare for a potential future carbon tax?).

We probably used more water (SDG6) washing our hands – in drought destinations its value takes on a whole new level.

With travel reducing operations, jobs and the sector, we expected demand to outstrip supply, pushing up prices. Depending on lockdown let-loose timing with school holidays, few may have had an early opportunity to go far for long, or indeed the money, with insecurity in the economy and jobs (SDG8). Some were better off, also but appreciated the quality of life lessons learned from time at home, possibly bringing more gender equality (SDG5) where both parents home-schooled (SDG4) and worked.

We weren’t so keen to get back to inflexible working or jump on public transport, preferring private vehicles and less travel, potentially creating lower pollution, energy use (SDG7), and carbon emissions, thus support for sustainable consumption and production (SDG12) and conservation of our environment – marine (SDG14) and land (SDG15).

However, the sharpest decline conceivable (5.5% global output in 2020) was still not be enough to meet our Paris Agreement targets (7.6% global output then required, annually), highlighting just how far we have to go to improve our world faced with the climate crisis (SDG13).

On the surface, we expected more Peace (SDG16), a pre-requisite for tourism, for its recovery, yet more insecurity feeling: We became sure to better check our insurance for pandemic and lockdown cover at short notice.

The Medium Haul

When lockdown lifted, at our different points in the curve, we expected to see the sprouting of actual attitude change for longer term behaviour change, even though we could travel again further for longer.

It takes anywhere from 18 days to 254 days for people to form a new daily habit, and on average 66 days before a new behaviour becomes automatic (Lally, 2009). So with lockdowns for more than 2 months, daily home rituals could become habit and cause us to change our behaviour and lifestyles.

Those who business travel realised it is just not worth the faff for a day or more when you can Zoom from home for an hour or so – we can live without travel for most face to face meetings. Great for our environment!

But we perhaps also might not leisure travel as frequently? Without forming new habits, will we just go back to exactly how we behaved before as soon as we can? Quite likely. Except the same suppliers might not have beenavailable, and pain avoidance (virus and life trauma) may be a greater incentive for different choices for some.

The travel landscape has likely looked different, with companies creating new partnerships (SDG17) in order to survive as we struggled to rebuild the sector and demand.

Some of these may have been with destination NGOs, keen to support those less fortunate than ourselves, with even less resources to cope. We might not have been able to get all foods on the shelves we do normally, but found we could live without many. We could learn to be more considerate of communities who ordinarily don’t have easy access to food, or zero hunger (SDG2).

As travel companies promote campaigns to support destinations impacted, we’ll become more aware of the importance of travel to local communities, and desire to help. When we realise we can do this just by having a great holiday and making the right, sustainable, positive impact travel choices we will be more inclined to do so.

This happened with Hurricane Katrina and the Asian Tsunami – the increase in demand to hands-on support drove the voluntourism market to rocket. Likewise, it will be the adventurous who started, then develop into mainstream consciousness, and we’ll have to keep an eye out for greenwashing and ensure there is legitimacy to any claims that holidays contribute anti-corona.

The Long Haul

In the long run, we expected to see full return to global tourism infrastructure (SDG9) – airlines & routes, borders open, international travel demand back when it is safe and secure for people to do so. In fact this happened quite quickly considering – 4.5 years.

But in the medium term meantime, the supply infrastructure changed with company liquidity and monetisation priorities, and the market changed its priorities thus attitudes and behaviour.

We could end up at a very different point of intersection of supply and demand, both supporting a more giving travel sector, compassionate to health, inequalities (SDG10), and poverty (SDG1).

What if all travel supported sustainable development?

To return to previous normal is to return to unsustainable.

But what do we want from holidays? According to UK research firm BDRC, consumers feel ‘excited’ and ‘happy’ at the prospect ‘to relax’, ‘spend quality time loved ones’, or ‘experience something new’, and the top five influences for overseas holiday choices are:

1. Weather

2. Price

3. Safety

4. Scenery and Landscape

5. Friendly people

Without considerations for community, climate, and conservation of nature, cornerstones of sustainability, where would we be with any of those?

Maybe it’s time we all starting measuring travel and tourism, not in GDP, but, like Bhutan in GNH – Gross National Happiness, or like Costa Rica, in Social Progress, or like New Zealand in Happiness and Well-Being?

The new normal has to be sustainable and positive impact.