While travel has rebounded since the abatement of the Covid-19 pandemic, the industry still needs to do more to embrace younger travellers.

That was one of the messages delivered today at the ITB Berlin convention in Germany during a ‘State of the Industry’ panel.

Speaking on the panel were Caroline Bremner, head of travel research at Euromonitor International; Mitra Sorrells, senior vice president for content at Phocuswright; and Virginia Messina, senior vice president for advocacy and communications at the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC).

The second to speak, Bremner said that it was ‘fantastic’ to be back in Berlin, reflecting on the decade or so that she had been coming to the convention. Bremner said it was forecast that there would be $5tn worth of spending in tourism in 2024, with another $1.1tn of spending set to take place in the next five years.

She said: “It’s fantastic be here and to be breaking all the records ever seen before in travel and tourism. We all experienced the pandemic, came through the other side, and are now smashing it!”

Speaking during the panel and after the initial presentations, Messina said that sustainability remained a key trend, an assertion that Bremner agreed with.

Messina added: “The good news is that carbon intensity is reducing. For every dollar spent on travel and tourism, we are producing less carbon. That said, the change does need to be much faster. We’re also trying, from a business perspective, to know where we stand. That’s why we launched our recent Net Zero Roadmap at Cop 29 in Azerbaijan.”

Bremner said that much of this development was coming from conscious consumers.

She said: “There has been a seachange since the pandemic. Consumers don’t want to trash destinations, even though overtourism is back in the news. We’ve seen that consumers want to have a positive impact—we just need to ensure that we are giving them environmentally friendly services that they’ll enjoy and pay for.”

There are other issues, said Sorrell. What has been surprising, she said, from the research that Phocuswright has done is that many of the generation—roughly a third—said that they still approached travel agents when looking to holiday. They also, contrary to common belief, have a preference for hotels rather than more-domestic services such as AirBNB.

She said: “This demographic is now approaching thirty and they have both spending power and a love of travel. They also have this sentiment that the responsibility for sustainability should come down to suppliers, along with some sort of regulation from government. They’re also less likely to look at loyalty programmes and they’re more likely to use social media – that’s something that we as an industry need to look at!”