Grounded: Lockdown And The Future Of Travel

Battle of Ideas audio archive

Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe GROUNDED: LOCKDOWN AND THE FUTURE OF TRAVEL https://archives.battleofideas.org.uk/2021/session/grounded-lockdown-and-the-future-of-travel/ During lockdown, it was illegal to leave the UK without a ‘reasonable excuse’. Everything was turned upside-down: student gap-year travel plans, weekend stag parties, hitchhiker getaways, European city breaks and even business flights. While Zoom became our virtual means of communication across borders, international travel in the first 12 months of the pandemic fell by 97 per cent. As a result, 193 European Airports face insolvency, nearly 50 commercial airlines have gone bankrupt, thousands of staff and allied services have been laid off. Heathrow Airport alone has lost £2.4 billion in the past 12 months. Equally concerning is the attitude to travel engendered by the pandemic. In a survey conducted in the UK in July 2021, after lockdown had ended, 54 per cent of respondents had a ‘general unease about travelling’ or said that it was ‘not responsible’. Some have inferred that the government’s plans for red, amber, green, green-plus and amber watchlist countries were intentionally confusing in order to dissuade us – to ‘nudge’ us – into reconsidering our travel plans in the first place. The confusion caused by unpredictable permissions checklists, uncomfortable testing regimes, expensive quarantine, as well as the uncertainty of the traffic-light status of countries, means that travel is often risky and unpleasant, and relaxing beach holidays have become stressful activities. It has also caused many people to reappraise whether they want the hassle. As part of its Covid strategy, the government encouraged British sun-seekers to ‘holiday at home’ and enjoy ‘great places’ in the UK in order to avoid ‘inessential’ foreign travel. With the Independent newspaper noting that a holiday cottage in Cornwall costs roughly three times as much as a week on the Algarve, the future of travel is undoubtedly going to be an expensive one. As part of its forthcoming net-zero climate strategy, government restrictions are going to get far tougher. One professor of engineering and the environment at Cambridge University says that cheap flights will get four times more expensive, but that ‘the only way the UK can get to net zero emission aviation by 2050 is by having a substantial period of no aviation at all’. Conversely, in November, more than 20,000 people from nearly 200 countries will fly into the UK to take part in the COP26 environmental summit in Glasgow. The Prime Minister has assured his detractors that this demonstrates a commitment to carbon neutrality, energy saving and international diplomacy. These flights, says a spokesperson for No 10, are ‘essential’. Philosopher Alain de Botton questions whether ‘we must always go to new places in order to feel and discover fresh and worthwhile things’. What is essential and non-essential travel? Do we need to travel or is it enough to want to travel? Has coronavirus shown that we often romanticise foreign holidays at the cost of our peace of mind, our bank balance and the planet? Speakers Madalina Benderschi conference producer; project coordinator; leader, UK-JP; Living Freedom alumnus Jennifer Howze journalist; travel writer; co-founder, BritMums, former director of communications, British Guild of Travel Writers Alexander Jan non-executive chair, Central District Alliance; chief economic advisor, London Property Alliance; member, Mayor of London infrastructure advisory group Kevin McCullagh founder, Plan; innovation strategist and writer Shelagh McNerney independent built environment consultant Chair Austin Williams senior lecturer, Dept of Architecture, Kingston University, London; honorary research fellow, XJTLU, Suzhou, China; author, China’s Urban Revolution: understanding Chinese eco-cities