 I can take also questions from the audience. Just one question, Kallota, will you introduce the speakers as moderator? I can do that, yeah. Okay, fine. Just to make sure there's no double. And I have a very short introduction. So I think around 10 seconds and we will go live and then you see the little reds. Here we go. Welcome everybody to this already 11th Green Post Corner Talks organized by the Green European Foundation in cooperation with Think Tank OICOS. And yeah, we already covered many topics in the 10 sessions before. And I think it's very timely that for the last session we chose the future of tourism. I guess many of you watching this seminar had to change their holiday plans and probably I think spent your time more in a local area, which maybe is not such a bad thing. Anyway, it's clear that tourism after Corona will be something different than before. I'm also very happy that with the team from the Green European Foundation, we were happy to organize this series and it's really a team organizing this. And therefore, I found it also appropriate that this session before summer because you can be sure we will come back after summer, that this session will be operated by Carlotta Weber. So Carlotta, I'm very happy to give you the floor. Thanks very much, Dirk. Yes, I'm Carlotta Weber from the Green European Foundation. I'm the strategy manager there and I've been working, as Dirk said, in the team to organize this series. As Dirk already said, there is a question whether tourism might change. But now we are already seeing European borders opening again. European Commission has launched a reopen you initiative. And the question really arises whether whether COVID-19 can be a second chance for sustainable tourism that considers and tries to reverse the detrimental social and environmental impacts of tourism. Was this freeze of international tourism and travel? Was this the chance to really bring industry to low or even zero carbon intensity? Or are we already going back on the wrong track, so to speak? I'm referring to over tourism as was the case before pandemic. And there will maybe previous efforts even be reversed. So I'm really happy to welcome two great speakers. We have with us Rob Fletcher, who is an environmental anthropologist and associate professor in the sociology of development and change group at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. He is an author and researcher working around issues such as equal tourism, globalization. He's worked on tourism and degrowth. And we also have Braum von Brakewels, the alderman of the city of Gantt, responsible for tourism and a member of Grün of the Flemish Green Party. So I would like to give the floor first to Rob. For many years, you have been researching issues related to tourism and you have published various articles as well as among other things co-edited a book entitled Tourism and Degrowth that I also just mentioned. You are analyzing problems such as over tourism, but also the cultural impact of more specifically even equal tourism. Can you maybe tell us a bit more about the impact tourism pre-COVID-19 already had on our societies and environment and cultures? And since this was a still rapidly growing industry, how does this connect to the concept of degrowth? How can this be connected? And what could be a framework for truly sustainable tourism post-COVID if you could create it from scratch? Thank you. Well, thank you very much for this introduction and also for the opportunity to be part of this discussion and to share my views. In thinking about these questions of sustainable tourism, my basic perspective is that making the tourism industry as a whole more sustainable entails not just trying to change how tourism is done at the current volume that we had it before the crisis, but also emphasizing the need to reduce this total volume as a whole in order to achieve any chance of genuine sustainability. And this is something that doesn't usually come up in discussions of sustainable tourism, which tend to focus much more on merely trying to reduce the environmental and sometimes even social impacts of tourism as it's currently practiced. But I think it's quite clear that the global volume of tourism that we experienced before the COVID crisis was simply unsustainable in any dimension, and it would have been impossible to render it sustainable in either environmental or social terms. And this is not only because the environmental impacts of this volume were impossible to mitigate enough to make a real difference, but also because, as we just heard, it was already starting to have very profound social impacts, even if the environmental impacts were mitigated. So it would still not be sustainable in social terms. And what I'm referring to here is, of course, this growing discussion of over-tourism that was very prominent in Europe before the crisis or a range of very popular European cities were experiencing what many residents considered to be unsustainable flows that were impacting their ability to actually enjoy the cities in which they lived. The discussion had been growing within Europe ever since the 2008 economic crisis, as tourism was very much used as one of the strategies to try to re-stimulate economic growth more generally. In some places, it already started to react to these discussions by putting in measures in place, not just to make the tourism flows that they had more sustainable, but to actually try to reduce this tourism growth, at least to a specific degree. And then all of a sudden the COVID crisis hit and everything changed in an instant. Before this crisis, people had started to respond over-tourism by saying, well, what about under-tourism in particular places? But that had been a very minor part of the discussion and all of a sudden the entire world experienced what you could consider under-tourism. So many of the social and environmental issues that tourism activists have been calling for for some time before the crisis were realized in an instant. Carbon emissions dropped off significantly. Pollution in many places also dropped off. Waterways became clear in Venice. Birdlife started to return to the canals, many other places as well. And previously overcrowded city centers all of a sudden became deserted and they became slowly repopulated but predominantly by local residents as international travelers continued to be banned. Now, of course, the big problem with this was the economic impact of this sudden loss of tourism revenue. Tourism is one of the largest industries in the world. The UNWTO claims that it comprises a full 10% of global GDP. And so this sudden loss of tourism exposed another grave problem with the tourism industry as it was previously practiced in terms of its resilience given the fact that it could potentially be so vulnerable and that all of a sudden very quickly a substantial portion of the global economy could essentially just disappear. And so this became another aspect of this crisis of tourism development. We're seeing problems in environmental, social and economic terms simultaneously. And so quite predictably, we've seen the main response from many industry organizations including the UNWTO and the European Union has been to try to reopen tourism as much in as quickly as possible while still trying to take the threat of COVID spread still at least somewhat seriously. Now, it's very unlikely that this will really recapture all of the loss revenue that a fund has predicted at the beginning of the crisis. So the economic implications of this slowdown will still need to be addressed more significantly than we've seen it present. But even if tourism flows start to return to something that they were approaching the levels before the crisis the same environmental and social problems we experienced will simply come back again. Now, of course, organizations that are promoting tourism regrowth always qualify that this regrowth needs to be more sustainable. But as I mentioned at the beginning if this regrowth is intended to recover volumes similar to what we had before then I just don't think it's possible for these to be rendered sustainable. So I think the blunt conclusion of all of this is that the current situation shows a need to limit tourism regrowth to make sure it stays far below the levels it was in the past as more and more places reopen to domestic and international tourists over time. And while in the past governments frequently responded to complaints about over-tourism by claiming they cannot control the numbers of tourists who arrived in a given place the way states around the world have dealt with the COVID crisis has shown that this is untrue. So direct regulation of tourism flows even after the crisis remains possible and to my mind this is essential for the industry to have any chances of sustainability. Among other organizations the NGO Stay Grounded based in Europe published in December 2019 a really interesting report outlining various ways that this could be done in respect to air travel specifically. And so limiting this tourism regrowth will automatically address to some degree at least issues of environmental and social sustainability that we experienced before the crisis but of course there's still a need to make resurgent tourism flows more sustainable in these various ways as well. But the issue I really want to point to here and I think is most essential for us to address in this discussion will be the economic fallout of all of this, right? Because reducing the growth of the industry in the future will inevitably mean much less revenue for the industry and for national economies generally as well as for many people who gain their livelihoods from tourism work. And so I think this is where the majority of our thinking and planning really needs to concentrate right now. How can we work to make sure that the reduced stream of future tourism flows if we are in fact able to limit it in the ways that I've discussed is more equally distributed than those who work in the tourism industry. And also to ensure that those who are unable to continue to work in a downsized industry are supported in finding other sustainable livelihood opportunities. I have some thoughts about how to address these issues if there's time later to introduce and discuss them but I'll end my opening remarks with these essential questions and leave this for now. Thank you. Thanks very much Rob. I think that was a really great overview and a very, very quick introduction saying at the time limit to the issues at hand and indeed I mean let's come back to it after we hear from Bram what can be done very practical on a local, on a city level because you were mentioning I mean the economic fallout and we have indeed national economies around the world where up to one third of the national GDP is depending on tourism so indeed I and I think our viewers would be really curious to hear your ideas on that but let me give the floor to Bram first for his first intervention and he wanted to share a PowerPoint so I hope everything works out I give the floor to you Bram. Right, thanks a lot. I hope that everyone can see the PowerPoint as I can see it but I see you knowing so thanks a lot for giving the floor. My name is Bram Hamer-Reichwald as told I'm an element of tourism but also responsible for labour market work, social economy public cleanliness staff and of course like mentioned also tourism I have been contacted to elaborate on the question how to balance the economical aspects with environmental social impact on GANS plans to restart tourism in a local and sustainable manner I have not been told how to do it in 10 minutes I will try to do it in 10 minutes for those of you who do not know GANS and I hope that now my slides will go on yes there they are we are just 30 minutes away from Brussels Central by train GANS was next to Paris the biggest city on the north of the Alps in the 15th century and now we have around a quarter of a million inhabitants and we are the biggest student city in Belgium and with North Seaport we have one of the largest international ports in the world a few years ago Lonely Planet GANS as Europe's best kept secret and I'll show you why we have a medieval castle in the heart of the city we have the famous GANS altarpiece by Van Eyck we have three beginning which are also on the UNESCO World Heritage List we have modern architecture although the GANS is called the sheep stable we have an award winning light plan but most importantly we have a lot to show but our main asset is our vibe our GANS itself so maybe a bit about our tourism the more appealing our city became the last years for its inhabitants the more tourists found their way to our city on 20 years time it doubled that means that we're not on the level of Amsterdam or Barcelona or Venice or something like that so it's not to be compared but nonetheless when I saw these graphs when I started as Alderman in 2019 in January 2019 the amount of graphs they shook me up a bit I knew that something had to happen if we would not became the second Amsterdam or Venice or Barcelona in kind of over tourism as mentioned before so we knew we had to act and we decided not to do this on our own we decided to start an open debate with stakeholders because when you see the predictions before corona of course you can see that one of the estimated figures was that we would double again but this time in five years time from 1.1 million overnight stays to 2 million in five years of time so that would be really tremendous and would really have big impact on our city and so to avoid that and to look to find solution to the question how can be tourism be sustainable for our city we started a debate with our stakeholders and we asked a controversial bit of a bold question are tourists going to have the monopoly about Afghans so we started with a couple of nights of our evenings with our inhabitants but also our stakeholders to discuss about that topic and we started in November 2019 and our final report was on the 12th of March the day before Belgium went into lockdown so maybe just about the results of that participation process there were a couple of very clear conclusions that we can we can see that was a red line as a result the first one that was that tourism should be absolutely sustainable it's very clear that and I will give some examples say the wrong but it should be very sustainable the second one is that it should be only in Ghent that means that it should be based on our DNA on our city on who the Ghentians are and it should also be balanced with the size of our city the third conclusion was that it should be accessible to all so that means that all Ghentians should want to share their city but they do not want to sell it tourism that's an important fact and the last one is to keep all stakeholders involved and that means that not only the people who work in the sector but also those who live in Ghent all of those people want to be involved and that's a good thing that we can create our tourism story together so let's zoom in on evolution about sustainable tourism maybe a couple of facts from beginning on we started to focus on slow travelling we focused on the fact that tourism isn't sustainable when you come here and you make a selfie and you're gone now we started a specific campaign about if you're here in Ghent welcome and stay more than one night as you can see on the picture but we also were changing policy about Airbnb so we forced to stop because we know that it wasn't sustainable for the people living in Ghent for the prices of our homes and stuff like that but we also stopped investing in the local airport company in Austin and it wasn't sustainable anymore so that are a couple of facts that we started to change but later on during the debate and as a conclusion of the several debates we had we made up a plan a plan to make a couple of actions to make our tourism policy more sustainable so we focused on air quality we focused on housing we focused on our position as a sustainable city so that means that we decided to keep the touring cars out of the city center to half the amount of river cruises to focus on collective transport to come to Ghent to electrify guide tour boards stuff like that but also if you look and to the hotel sector we wanted to invest into the green key we wanted to have a fair B&B not just an air B&B so that were very important points but then of course something happened corona so the 16th of March Ghent was like a ghost city and of course that had a huge impact a loss of turnover of course but also a lot of failures to be expected we mentioned resilience Rok mentioned it and on one hand I'm very happy that we were never this far dependent on tourism in our city but nonetheless we have 7000 people working for where the job is related to tourism so that's something important to keep in mind and we see now already that 700 people are unemployed temporarily although that hotels in Belgium never had to be closed but of course there's not tourism you don't have hotels or something in a business that is working like it should be or like it was so that's one economical aspect but of course we saw also that there was a huge impact on the on the life in this city Ghentians realized that there's also a very positive impact on tourism on the vitality of our city a city needs tourism as a museum needs art or as a bar needs beer I always mentioned that but when it when it was going good as we say but in this period it's also important to mention it because tourism is important for a city but only if it's on a healthy level then of course the question how are we going to cope with this coronavirus how are we going to make sure that we can have tourism on a good way we discussed once again with all our stakeholders and we knew that we had conclusions of our debates that we had together not so long ago and we draw some very important conclusions like we knew that this would be a very difficult period but we also decided not to go back not to make the same mistakes as we did before so this is a moment to jump into a future proof and sustainable tourism story balanced with the city and its citizens so for us Rona was a fast forward outcome of the citizens debates and that's of course a very big privilege and we should really use this momentum so we decided to invest 1.5 million euro to have three important objectives first of all we decided to invest of course in marketing but then to show again as it really is I think that's very important and the second is that we invest in corona proof product design and that meant not only all the gels and the coverage that people are using but also to focus on spreading of tourism around the city to discover hidden treasures but also to invest in sustainable ways to get there by bike on foot but also to support local entrepreneurs who are of course in cash troubles but to use that investment also to invest in sustainable goals I think that's very important and of course as an economical and academic city congresses and meetings are important it's also important for our tourism story but we know that we are going into a next phase on congresses and in meetings so we are investing in that to have debates also together with the university to see how can we write a sustainable story about congresses and how can we cope with the new future of congresses so that our three main objectives about our corona approach for tourism but like I said it also made possible to accelerate a few of our plant actions like electrification of guide tour boats like Bicranteau to invest in the green key but also to focus on employment in the tourism sector as mentioned it's very for me also as an element on work it's an important challenge that we can invest in future future proof jobs so and one especially important thing is that we felt it's important to invest once again in local tourism so we worked together with our Flemish government to have a campaign about we missed you, welcome back and that was a good leverage to focus really on local travelling and I think that's a positive thing that we reinvented local travelling thanks to corona and that we didn't just do it by the city of Ghent but together with several partners so I think I'm running out of time I will try to conclude if you are asking me what are now the conclusions about future proof story about corona and the impact on tourism I think it's still too early the second way for other kinds of impact but it's important to look forward that's one conclusion the second is that of course we are just one little city in an international market of tourism with a big lobby system behind it so we as a city government we are taking a responsibility to invest in a sustainable story a sustainable policy but nonetheless we do not have every stimulus in our hands but we dare to make choices and one of the things is that we invested a third conclusion and not keep on growing but to invest in a sustainable way and to keep the balance with the city I think that's really important and to do that we worked together with our stakeholders and I'm happy to conclude that corona in this story is an accelerator for the future proof and sustainable tourism instead of a threshold so that's really an important thing I think that was what I wanted to tell in those first 10 minutes but nonetheless of course if you would ever doubt you're all welcome again thanks very much indeed I think that in this case this is a story with a partially good ending I mean we're not at the end of the story yet but indeed it shows how important it is that you also have a diversified economy and again was in that case not so dependent on tourism and the effects have therefore not been that devastating yet I wanted to ask for a short clarification you mentioned twice green key in also in relation to housing maybe you can just quickly say what that means specifically well it's kind of a label and of course I think for me the label is important but it's not the end the green key label is especially for the cases where people can come to stay and a couple of what else already have the label it's a kind of investment and more sustainability I think it's a good thing that people and hotels can make steps forward but I do not think that this will be the end of the story but if it can help for the sector on the whole to put a huge step forward into sustainability that would be important but as I mentioned it will not be the last step in a sustainable story for tourism as a whole. Thanks very much there has also been a clarification question via Facebook to Rob you were talking about possible ways to basically really become active from the government side to avoid over tourism again and someone on Facebook wanted to know basically do you mean that we should have tourist caps so limiting the entry to countries or certain regions to avoid that they are becoming overcrowded or how would you see those actions becoming reality? It's a very good question and an essential question and my short answer is yes I think that's exactly what we need but not necessarily in terms of direct caps on number of tourists we need to do is to really think about what the carrying capacity of cities can be in social and environmental dimensions and then to use other forms of regulation to try to reach those carrying capacities rather than direct tourist caps limiting the number of airplanes that are actually able to land limiting the number of runways that they are able to use the number of other forms of mass transportation that are able to access the city hotel beds but of course then also regulating other forms of accommodation like Airbnb and other social media based platforms all of these things are I think essential steps and are going to have to happen as we move forward but I do want to point out that one of the potential pitfalls of this that we really need to take seriously is the fact that if you just think about limiting numbers of tourism flows and just based on basic principles of supply and demand costs are going to increase and essentially what you're doing is then suggesting that only the people who can afford to are those who are going to be able to travel and this is actually what some destinations do quite consciously as a way to address issues of over tourism is to focus on what is often called quality tourism right smaller numbers of tourists who pay a lot more and that of course creates a social justice issue a class issue that also needs to be thought through so somehow we need to limit the number of tourists who arrive in a place while also distributing the availability to travel across the social spectrum potentially by differentiated airline rates differentiated tourism tax which is another form of regulating how many people arrive in such a way that it still allows a wider spectrum of humanity to have access to travel in the future thanks yeah maybe then we are I see we're already diving into tackling the economic questions I think here we also had a comment from from Facebook questioning if it is always so useful to focus on the GDP benefits and not looking at the local benefits indeed because a lot of the value of tourism doesn't even land in the local communities brown was also mentioning this yeah issue of one one day stay tourism with guests not even staying this is a big problem also in cities like Venice but yeah we do have countries especially in the global south smaller island countries like the maladies where yeah the GDP or the economy depends to one third on tourism in a lot of countries the foreign currency is also used to sustain actually the local communities and the wildlife around it so Rob maybe you can highlight a bit of the economic ideas that you were mentioning in the beginning on how we could avoid this economic default thanks first yeah addressing this issue of GDP you're exactly right GDP is a very crude measure of economic activity and economic prosperity and it's been very profoundly question in lots of ways for a long period of time if you're looking for a more in-depth analysis the book Donate Economics very popular recently by Kate Rower this very good kind of analysis of the problems of you know that only measures some aspects of flows but it is really useful as a shorthand to emphasize how important tourism is in the global economy but also in a variety of national and local economies but of course a lot of other activity economic turnover as you say a lot of impacts on housing transport pollution waste and all of that and as you mention one of the big problems of tourism is the issue that we call leakage the fact that a lot of resources that come in leave the local area quite quickly right so one of the first things to do is to make sure that more of the resources are captured within a given place but also distributed right within this place so that more people involved in the industry have more access to this how do you do this well it seems that our colleague from again has has a lot of really good examples and measures that have been put into place to try to do exactly this so I would like to turn over the floor to him to discuss that more practical aspect of addressing this on a on a concrete level yeah thanks I think that at the moment when tourism became becomes an only an economical story then you're in deep control so that means that it's very important to be resilient as a as a city and towards tourism as a whole I think that it's very important to be of course open and open for tourism but also to see the benefits culturally and when you have every day a group of people coming to your city and looking at the city from their point of view that's very very interesting to learn more about your own city and to learn more about how the world is working you don't have to travel just to know how the world is working as a whole you can also talk to the people who are visiting a city every day and of course I know it's a bit naive but you should never forget that that's the real importance about tourism that visiting is a very important and big thing but it shouldn't make you dependent on it and I think that when you lose that balance it's very difficult to especially in times like these to find new story and to see that your labour market is sustainable enough to be resilient enough so that is why we are proud that we made choices before it was too late that we learned from Amsterdam, from Barcelona, from Venice but nonetheless I think that this is an exercise that every European city has to do and of course it should be sustained by also the not only by this itself but I think that it's a European story and that is why it's very important that local leaders are awake for that and do not just think that things should be like before. No, this is really a momentum and we should take it if we want to have a sustainable tourism story because as I mentioned it's really important but it can be dangerous when it's only an economical story where you are dependent on it so I think that that should be a really important focus for the next few days weeks, months to take this momentum and to change that policy. Can I add briefly to this discussion a bit more? Yes please. So this issue about the impacts of tourism that extend beyond the tourism economy itself issues of housing, public space, transport, pollution waste, all of these things. Within a tourism research, we refer to these as kind of the tourism comments the fact that there's these background elements of a place, of a city, whatever that tourists don't pay for that are really essential to their experience. And often that becomes the burden of the public administration to revive for these things that end up being translated into revenue that oftentimes is captured by private sector firms tourism based. Really interesting article in The Guardian recently called the end of tourism that really made this point that the tourism industry is somewhat unique because it tends not to actually own the things that it sells as the basis of its revenue. So one of the things that you need to do is to try to make sure that tourists and that tourism providers are actually paying to a certain extent for the things that they use and essentially you have to do that through some form of tourist taxation. And I was wondering in Ghent in order to encourage people to stay more than one night, do you have some form of tourism tax? I know in Venice they instituted a tax that was trying to encourage people to stay longer by having tax for people who only stayed in the city for a very short time. So we just have a flat tax but we chose not to raise the tax so it's three years per night. In the past we tried to make a difference between the kind of stay but apparently it wasn't legally to do that. Unfortunately it's a flat tax but not less we tried to stimulate by for example a city card and stuff like that I think that's important but we also decided not to raise the tax because I think that when people are willing to stay the night a couple of nights that's more sustainable than for example the cruises we decided to to hope by and you have those great groups of people wandering around the city and on the whole it's mostly that kind of groups that people don't like in the city so when they see those kinds of groups not spending anything and then leaving again with their very filthy cruises that's kind of tourism that we decided not to invest in even more we decided that it should be less than before because that's not really an example of sustainable tourism. And I think that's a really good example of one of the tourism sub sectors that depends so much on infrastructure that it doesn't pay for and we've really seen the dramatic impact of that in terms of when entire cruise ships became infected with COVID and needed then to rely on the health infrastructure of places in which they weren't based and where they didn't pay taxes and that created a huge amount of problems so I think one of the major changes that we're likely to see in the tourism industry moving forward is in terms of the cruise industry I think that's going to be re-structured and re-regulated tremendously or at least I hope so. Yeah it's an important issue connected to as we're talking about the biggest polluter besides air travel I wanted to connect this to a question on train travel which might see maybe a revival there are some regional agreements creating travel bubbles like by Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia and also the trying to promote domestic tourism and as Bram also mentioned local tourism so I was wondering what your assessments were maybe do you think this could promote more train travel and a specific question also from Facebook for Bram how do you see GENT in a hopefully new network of night trains across Europe? As I mentioned we're only 30 minutes away from Russell Central by train so unfortunately my train towards Vienna was couldn't go on because of the crisis but we have several of train stations here in GENT and one of the things that we want to do is to plan our arrival in the city more than it is today so that people can feel welcome when they arrive here in our train stations because for the moment that's a big problem so that will ask more of investments later on and fortunately in one year and a half you can change everything but I really think that train travelling will be the way to travel in the future and you see a revival and you saw a revival before Covid of night trains and I think it's really important but also on that level I think that we are having debates about how to support the airport companies Lufthansa and so on but I do not hear the train lobby at this time I do not know where they are if they are taking actions to address politicians to invest in that kind of travelling and that's really a disappointment but maybe it's only in Belgium I don't know but I really believe that if we could do more investments on night trains that we could connect Europe in a very in a better way than today just to add is I fully agree with that I think one of the major things that needs to happen in Europe and other places particularly for instance in North America in the United States where I'm originally from is major investment in that form of public transport especially high speed trains I think we're going to start seeing more restrictions on and especially just discouragement from short haul air travel and in order to replace that it's going to be essential to have better and faster trains one of the issues around train travel is of course the fact that many of us are so pressed for time in general and we do need to travel places it's often just not possible to spend the time it takes to be on a train as they are right now so I think the movement towards more train travel will definitely require more efficient and faster trains and especially night trains as you've mentioned like I mentioned I'm also the staff of Alderman and one of the decisions we made is that when our staff has to travel they cannot travel by car or by plane any longer on the way that we did before it should take the train and I think that's very important so what I'm trying to say is that everyone has its role to play in that story and we should cooperate to make sure that this would be an investment for the future but it's not always easy there are several levels of government competent for that story and the whole but nonetheless if everyone takes responsibility it could go a bit faster than today I definitely agree with that my university has done something similar now our new restriction now is if travel is less than 6 hours then we're not allowed to travel by plane but I think those changes need to be accompanied by some type of more structural change in terms of how our lives are organized in certain times it's just not possible for me to attend the events that I want to do if I have to spend 6 hours on the train as an example in the week before to give a talk I had to leave after teaching a class on Monday and be back again before teaching again on Wednesday those are the restrictions that I had and the only way I could possibly do that so yeah it's important for us to take individual responsibility for the things we can but we also need some support I think in terms of helping to reorganize our lives so that we can move slower and stay longer in the places we visit for sure that's one of the aspects I think well now that we are we're still in the COVID-19 period I think a lot of event participation will also maybe stay online in the future so I think there is certainly I like the idea of slowing down our lives in general but I think there is also the aspect of traveling less in general whether that's for tourism and for work maybe with having a digital infrastructure that brings a whole lot of new problems with it but it could be one solution I mean you both were talking about major investments that are needed talking about the responsibility of everyone we have a question on this what you really do on those like yeah mainly in the tourism industry really big players and Ram you were mentioning the lobby behind it and you also said that it's complicated because there are different levels of government involved what really would be the changes you would like to see from different government levels in Belgium maybe the regional and the national and then maybe the European level but also what are concretely maybe the changes that consumers need to take need to do in their own behavior maybe a couple of things a lot of things but I will try to mention a couple of I believe that when we talk about tourism it's very important to keep the positive things top of mind so over tourism is a problem that doesn't mean that tourism is a problem as such I really want to stress that but nonetheless I believe that we all have seen that growing without limits that's really a problem as Rob also mentioned we should have a debate on that we should really focus on what kind of tourism do we want in the future and it works I'm really happy that we made the choice in Ghent to have that debate not just with our citizens but also with all stakeholders and we put them together and then they realize that's your perspective of course because you gain money by tourism and you live here so that's important for you so that kind of dialogue of course we're just a city we're not in Europe because it's treating the future on tourism and the kind of tourism that you want and as I see in Ghent people are really eager to show the city to work together on a tourist story and to show the city as it is but as it is is really important we don't want to sell a story that isn't correct we want to have the interaction and I believe that's kind of tourism that could beat the future but we just have to invest in having the dialogue with one another and not just to see the euros behind the story I think that's a really important mind shift that we have to have today also because as Rob mentioned if we do not act quickly a lot of people are going to lose their job and for the moment there's not something in place of that job so therefore a sustainable story on tourism is also very important sustainable policy is very important but I also believe that on tourists as itself they should also realize that they also have an impact the way that people are traveling I mentioned Airbnb of course it's very and it's also the way I like to travel as well coming to people their lives so you can see the city as it really is you think there's also limits to that it's not sustainable for the people who live nearby and it also doesn't help to invest in the things that you really want to invest in on a sustainable level so that's why you also as we as travelers should make our decisions a bit more a bit more over thought and that should be stimulated also by the government that on the one hand to make sure that the Airbnb of this world do not keep on you know keep on having profits without investing because as Rob mentioned that's really a problem so those are a few of the things that I'm thinking about but of course as I mentioned the big question is are we allowing ourselves to think about a tourism of the future and are we prepared to make choices and that decisions will have an economical impact on short term of course thinking about cruise thinking about airplanes but on the longer term that will make a huge new story for a lot of people working in tourism today and tomorrow I think that's very important that we have to debate in that just to add that a bit because this is a normal question but also an essential one how it is we actually make the changes that we need to and of course as Rob said before requires multilevel governance changes that have to happen at all different levels individuals can make certain changes municipalities can make certain changes nations can make certain changes but ultimately they need to be supported by larger structures as well if one city, one country on Europe limits tourism flows then most likely it will go to another place that doesn't have those same limits and will just collectively but then concretely what do you do with these different levels that can be quite difficult and the example I come to is in the beginning of my research which was not focused on urban tourism or over tourism at all but on rural ecotourism as Carlota mentioned and for a while that was kind of the emphasis in trying to focus on sustainable tourism to direct people away from taking advantage of big tourism enterprises mass tourism standardized packages and to get them to focus on alternative forms of tourism that were in smaller scale in rural areas that involved a less environmental impact hopefully and more kind of deeper cultural interaction with local people and that can work to a certain degree the problem is again to be able to maintain those aspects the industry has to remain relatively small so it can't grow very much or it becomes part of the same problem that it's trying to correct another aspect of the problem is that it's quite clear that the majority of tourists aren't actually looking for that kind of experience and they are actually interested in these types of mass tourism experiences that you have one thing that can be done to try to educate tourists or to try to encourage them to think in different ways eco certification programs like green keys that we heard about before that works to a certain degree but it's also quite clear that most tourists don't know and that many actually don't care about the sustainability of their enterprises right so there's certain things that tourists can do to actually put their values into practice by seeking out sustainable alternatives and there's lots of guidance for how to do that those are the things that governments and also private entity certification programs need to be accompanied by some form of direct regulation that creates a stimulus for smaller and medium term enterprises most likely through direct subsidies through tax breaks through providing direct economic encouragement and that somehow also discourages the growth of these large enterprises by by placing more restrictions on their growth so you need this form of direct regulation I think at the municipal level also at the regional and hopefully a global level as well combined with attempts to try to encourage local alternatives and also encourage tourists to think about the impacts of their travel and start trying to do what they do differently thanks very much that's a huge challenge all of that of course yes indeed I think also just wanted to point out that we are talking about basically reducing while still making sure that the livelihoods of those who are working in the industries are not too much affected I just wanted to point out also the gender dimension so the international labour organization has also warned in its latest predictions on the decrease of income through the tourism industry that those majorly affects young women a lot of young women but we also know that a lot of migrant workers are actually employed in the tourism industry so I wanted to hear your thoughts I think in general it connects a lot to a redistribution and equality discussion this topic as well but I wanted to hear your thoughts on how to also soften the impact of this economic crisis on those groups I think softening the impact of the crisis is one thing but also what you've pointed to here is the fact that the majority of the labour in the tourism industry before the crisis was also very very problematic a lot of it was done particularly by young women and often migrant women and often that employment was very insecure very precarious and very poorly paid doing things like cleaning hotel rooms and that kind of thing so it was already a big problem that activists were pointing to before the crisis so in addition to trying to find ways to support people's loss of livelihood the last thing we also don't want to do is to go back to simply trying to recreate those same forms of precarious and underpaid employment that happened before how do you address all this well ideally in a larger sense and this goes beyond tourism coming to place in all societies but especially within Europe where we have the resources to do so is universal basic income that's been a discussion for quite some time now and since this crisis it's just very dramatic in terms of how much impetus there has been to developing this discussion and I think it's something that really needs to be brought more and more into the central of policy discussion Spain is starting to implement a semblance of UBI these are considering it Finland just concluded a major study of a pilot project that had really interesting results I think we need to think about how to continue this discussion in the future so that nobody has to wholly rely on income from tourism and especially from precarious sources of income yeah thanks very much interesting that you mentioned universal basic income our foundation is working for a long time already on this and one of our past green post corona talks in this format was on the topic of universal basic income so a lot of the things you mentioned were discussed there so I encourage everyone to go back in the recordings and rewatch it while we're coming already slowly to the end I would maybe give the floor again to Bram to maybe give some concluding words or also answer to what Rob and I just pointed towards yeah I didn't expect us debating on the topic but nonetheless in my own years as president we put it on the agenda as well so and that's also already six years ago so I really believe that you know it's good that when we have crisis like this we want to think out of the box and stuff like basic income and topics like that are really important you know just to make sure that you do not keep following the same path especially when you know that the same path will lead to not so great things so I just want to stress that but I only want to say thank you for this debate and this conversation because I believe that this is one step an important step towards another tourism as to have to debate you know just to ask the question did we did it go well before and how can we change our policy after corona after covid so that we can really focus on a new kind of tourism and I think that's really important and a lot of things and I want to say already passed the review so I just want to thank you for the organisation and for having me here Thanks very much, yeah indeed I think that we will continue to discuss this discussion so we have actually a project ongoing on the question of yeah future proof zero carbon tourism and whether that's possible so we're working with great green foundations and organisations in many countries across Europe this project was planned already before the covid crisis hit now we are re-adjusting the focus a bit but yeah please stay tuned to the Green European Foundation and maybe we have this discussion again in a bit of a different setting and we see where again when I wanted to thank you both very much, thank you Rob for joining us I hope next time we can also have a panel with a bit more female representation again but well sometimes it doesn't work out the way we wanted to I think I want to thank everyone who has tuned in not only today for the green post-corona talks but in the last well 10 weeks already and accompanied us through this covid-19 period I want to thank the team that made this all possible if you like to support us tune in again in autumn and consider making a donation we will see each other back in autumn with Dirk taking over the moderation thank you very much and have a good summer thanks thank you Carlotta