Topos 118

tourism after lockdown
to po
no 118
2022
s.
PLACES
– Travel with us to
Bangkok, Barcelona,
Dubrovnik, Hawaii,
Iceland and Venice
CITY MAKERS
– Interviews with Luigi
Brugnaro, Xavier Marcé
and Yuthasak Supasorn
$ COMPANIES
– Reality check with
Lonely Planet, FairBnB
and cruise companies in
times of pandemic and
overtourism

COVER
PHOTO: Filip Wolak
A lonely, deserted Times Square in New York
City. Who could have ever imagined that? In
his aerial picture series “A Still Life - Pandemic
Landscapes”, the photographer Filip Wolak
captured once unimaginable situations during
the pandemic in the US. Read more on page 16.
What a crazy time!
The pandemic is still
raging around the
world. After about
two years of cuts and
abandonment, more
countries are nevertheless
coming to the conclusion to relax Covid
measures, sometimes drastically.
It is time for global tourism to develop a new
identity. After lockdown, will we ever be able to
travel as we did before? What will the tourism of
the future look like? How do we deal with the
problems of overtourism in cities and regions?
There are many question around tourism, and
answers as well as solutions are unfortunately
not yet sufficiently apparent in many places. For
cities, the endless crowds of visitors were a real
problem before Covid. Now it is a question of
reactivating tourism in a way that is not only
environmentally friendly, but also compatible
with the inhabitants. What approaches are cities
like Barcelona, Venice and Bangkok taking?
How do Iceland and Hawaii want to deal with
overtourism and what influence does social
media have on tourist crowds? Of course, in this
issue of topos, we are not just looking at ideas
on how to deal with overtourism but trying to
identify real solutions for sustainable tourism
for the cities of the future.
Some may wonder what topos magazine has to
do with tourism. This question can be answered
quite simply. Almost every metropolis on this
planet has to deal with the effects of an evergrowing
traveling crowd. Too many visitors can
displace the inhabitants of cities and unfortunately
often leave a swathe of devastation in
their wake. Apparently, many people care more
about producing memories than immersing
themselves in foreign cultures or societies. Thus,
whole areas of cities become more difficult for
residents to access and swathes of land are destroyed.
With topos, we want to look at future life
in the sustainable city and discuss the responsibility
of planners and city makers such as mayors
and city councils, but also the social responsibility
of companies in this. We want to play a part in
answering the questions of overtourism.
Now is the time to make tourism more
sustainable. First and foremost, cities need to
deal differently with visitor flows and develop
new mobility concepts. Cities will also have to
bring residents and tourists together. The city
of the future offers space for everyone. We all
carry part of the responsibility and must make
our cities more liveable. Deplorable conditions
and a lack of innovation must be overcome.
We will all have a say in what the final
solutions to overtourism issues look like. But
if we do not manage to find a new way of
dealing with urban tourism now, after the
numerous lockdown phases, it will be difficult
to develop solutions later.
This topos is about addressing the elephant in
the room and showing how it can work.
Enjoy reading.
TOPOS E-PAPER: AVAIL-
ABLE FOR YOUR DESKTOP
For more information visit:
www.toposmagazine.com/epaper
TOBIAS HAGER
Chief Content Officer
t.hager@georg-media.de
topos 005

Contents
THE BIG PICTURE
Page 8
OPINION
Page 10
CURATED PRODUCTS
Page 100
REFERENCE
Page 106
METROPOLIS EXPLAINED
Page 12
A STILL LIFE –
PANDEMIC LANDSCAPES
Page 16
A STILL LIFE –
PANDEMIC LANDSCAPES
Picture series and text by Filip Wolak – Part 1
Page 16
THE END OF TOURISM?
A look into the past, the present and
the future of tourism
Page 24
PILGRIMS AND FOLLOWERS
Venice between the needs of residents and
the demands of tourists
Page 62
“USING DATA ALLOWS US TO (...) MAKE THE CITY
MORE LIVEABLE FOR ITS RESIDENTS.”
Interview with Luigi Brugnaro, Mayor of Venice
Page 68
ESCAPE PLAN
Page 112
EDGE CITY
Page 114
IMPRINT
Page 113
BOOSTING ALOHA IN TOURISM
The pandemic brought Hawaii’s tourism industry to its
knees, begging international visitors to delay their visit
Page 34
CHANGING COURSE
Few tourism industries seem as controversial as the
cruise ship industry. A reflection.
Page 72
BARCELONA – WHEN A CITY IS A BRAND
The city of Gaudì between the tourist gaze and its
search for a sustainable future
Page 40
“BARCELONA IS NO HOLIDAY DESTINATION,
IT’S AN URBAN EXPERIENCE.”
Interview with Xavier Marcé, the Councilor for Tourism
and Creative Industries at Barcelona City Council
Page 48
ACCESSING VOLCANIC LANDSCAPES
Iceland's tourism best practice – the Saxhöll stairway
in Snaefellsjökull national park
Page 52
THE NONCONFORMISTS
A portrait of FairBnB
Page 58
THE CHALLENGES OF TOURISM – IN A NUTSHELL
Page 60/61
RECOVERY IN PARADISE
Thailand’s way to sustainable tourism
Page 74
“MASS TOURISM IS NO LONGER THE ANSWER FOR
OUR SUSTAINABLE FUTURE”
Interview with Yuthasak Supasorn, the Governor of the
Tourism Authority of Thailand
Page 82
“WE DON’T STAY AWAY FROM DESTINATIONS THAT
HAVE HAD LARGE NUMBERS OF VISITORS”
Interview with Tom Hall from Lonely Planet
Page 86
A STILL LIFE –
PANDEMIC LANDSCAPES
Picture series and text by Filip Wolak – Part 2
Page 90
CONTRIBUTORS
Page 98
ACCESSING VOLCANIC
LANDSCAPES
Page 52
Photos: Filip Wolak (above); Landslag
006 topos ISSUE 118

OPINION
Tobias Hager
Journalist and Chief Content Officer
“COLLECT
MOMENTS,
NOT
SOCIAL MEDIA
POSTS”
International society has perfected the art of making itself “instagrammable”.
We’re not just talking about Ariana Grande, Ronaldo and the like. Architects
and planners – such as Bjarke Ingels and Norman Foster for example – have
also perfected the art of presenting themselves on the social media platform
Instagram. It’s hardly surprising, then, that social media also massively determines
our travel behavior. The problem: the cities themselves still use the platforms
far too little. Yet they would be ideal for better guiding tourist flows.
010 topos ISSUE 118

Opinion
Even though it is hard to imagine – there was
a time before the pandemic. A time when it
was hardly possible to visit sights or worldfamous
cities without crowds of people. After
more and more people around the globe
discovered the joy of traveling, it didn’t take
long until many European cities in particular
had more problems than benefits from the
crowds of visitors. This was fuelled by social
media. Instagram, TikTok and many other
social networks were platforms for pictures in
front of the same motifs and backgrounds.
The so-called Instagram hotspots were a help
at first, but then developed into a real problem
for many cities and inhabitants. It was no
longer possible to cope with the crowds and
some regions were so badly affected that
normal coexistence among the inhabitants no
longer seemed possible. Then Covid came and
suddenly the tourism industry worldwide was
down. Some of the former tourist routes were
reclaimed by their inhabitants. Travel posts
and the influence of social networks on
people’s travel behavior inevitably reduced.
Experts now fear that with reduction of contact
restrictions, the calm before the storm will come
to an end and in a short time we will have to deal
with even more tourists than before the
pandemic. The memories are still there, of the
horror stories in which an overwhelming
number of tourists leave significant damage to
the environment. Case in point: After pop singer
Justin Bieber filmed a music video in Iceland
and it went viral on social media in 2015, over a
million people made their way to visit this particular
gorge in a short period of time. In 2018,
the authorities had to close access to give nature
a rest. Something similar happened in Germany.
A natural “infinity pool” attracted many tourists
to Bavaria. Too many people wanted a photo in
front of the breathtaking scenery. In 2021, the
authorities closed the pool for five years.
Social media are multiplication platforms.
They do not only generate uncontrolled
tourist flows. Nowadays, these platforms take
on an important role in terms of information
gathering. Many people choose their travel
destinations and routes through cities only via
Instagram and the like. Which restaurants are
trending? Where are the best drinks? Which
museums and exhibitions should I see in a
foreign city? For many people, these and other
questions are now only answered via social
media. More and more cities have discovered
social media for their own marketing activities.
Unfortunately, however, these efforts are still
in their infancy in many places.
If one wants to seriously influence the streams
of visitors that are channeled through the
cities of the world via social networks, then
cities need to understand where their visitors
are. Data collected through social networks
and other services needs to be better analyzed.
Ultimately, there is no getting around one fact:
too many cities still have a massive amount of
catching up to do when it comes to digitalization.
First and foremost, they need to better
understand digital platforms. And no, a Facebook
page alone is no longer enough. If cities
understand the platforms on which they reach
tourists, they can also place suitable offers. The
poster in the underground station no longer
cuts it.
The fact is, the pandemic has offered us a small
glimpse of the beauty of our sights and
hotspots. We should take inspiration from
this. Social media now plays a central role in
tourists’ travel planning and leisure activities.
Through social media, you can reach residents
as well as tourists, and with clear thoughts as
well as ideas, we can certainly find some
exciting solutions on how to deal with the ever
increasing number of tourists in the future
and, above all, how to communicate digitally.
Hopefully, at some point we will be able to
ensure that visiting a city is no longer just
about producing social media posts, but about
experiences that break down barriers and
prejudices and contribute to creating a more
peaceful future for all of us.
TOBIAS HAGER is a journalist and Chief Content
Officer and member of the management board at
GEORG Media. Responsible for all GEORG brands
such as topos magazine, BAUMEISTER and
Garten + Landschaft, his focus is on the areas of
content, digital, marketing and entrepreneurship.
topos 011

tourism after lockdown
A Still Life –
Pandemic
Landscapes
Emptied cities, skies, airports, stadiums, deserted parking lots, roads,
schools, workplaces… 2020, a year where our world stood still, holding
its breath and bracing for challenges unknown to the modern, developed
world. This photo series is a visual story of human environments,
but distanced from the personal and dramatic demise which the pandemic
has caused to so many. Let this selection bear silent witness to
the changes that have affected us all during the course of the past two
years.These photographs were taken from a small airplane – (a Cessna
172 nicknamed Rusty for it’s original 1973 paint) – whilst crossing the
continent during the early months of the pandemic. The original series
has been supplemented by images taken a year later, as the vaccination
efforts were in full swing.
PICTURE SERIES AND TEXT BY FILIP WOLAK
016 topos ISSUE 118

JFK AIRPORT, NEW YORK
An unusually silent JFK airport during the peak of the COVID-19 crisis (May 2020). Over the course of this shoot, no movement
was observed when just a few months earlier this was the usual hive of activity. A thick cloud layer had started moving in over
the airport, and its sharp boundary revealed the unique partial sun / partial shade lighting conditions.
topos 017

tourism after lockdown
The end
of
024 topos ISSUE 118

tourism?
The pandemic has devastated global tourism, and many will say ‘good riddance’
to overcrowded cities and rubbish-strewn natural wonders. Is there any way to
reinvent an industry that does so much damage?
CHRISTOPHER DE BELLAIGUE
topos 025

tourism after lockdown
Of all the calamities that befell tourists as the coronavirus
took hold, those involving cruise ships stood
apart. Contagion at sea inspired a special horror, as
pleasure palaces turned into prison hulks, and rumours
of infection on board spread between fetid
cabins via WhatsApp. Trapped in close proximity to
their fellow passengers, holidaymakers experienced
the distress of being both victims and agents of infection,
as a succession of ports refused them entry.
When it began, the deadly situation at sea was
seen as a freakish outgrowth of what many still
thought of as a Chinese problem. The first ship to
suffer a major outbreak was the Diamond Princess.
By mid-February 2020, 355 cases had been confirmed
aboard, and the ship was held in quarantine
in the port of Yokohama. At the time, the ship accounted
for more than half of reported cases outside
China. Fourteen passengers on the Diamond
Princess would die of the virus.
The nightmare at sea continued for a long time.
Even after passengers from more than 30 afflicted
cruise ships were allowed to disembark, and flooded
into hospitals, quarantine hotels or on to charter
flights home, an estimated 100,000 crew and staff
remained trapped at sea, some in quarantine, others
blocked from disembarking until their employers
could make onward travel arrangements. This
second drama led to a mass hunger strike – by
15 Romanian crew in limbo off the coast of Florida
– and a police intervention to quell disturbances on
a ship quarantined in the German port of Cuxhaven.
As recently as 1st June 2020, crew and staff aboard
20-odd cruise ships marooned in Manila Bay were
reportedly clamouring to be allowed ashore.
CRUISE SHIPS: Few tourism industries seem
more controversial – learn more about
it on page 72
Cruises have become a symbol of the ravages that
coronavirus has inflicted on tourism. A sector that
until January 2020 was worth 150 billion U.S. Dollar,
by its own estimate, cut jobs, issued debt and
discounted furiously simply to survive. But even
before the Covid crisis hit, cruising had become
symptomatic of the damage that tourism wreaks on
the world.
Tourism is an unusual industry in that the
assets it monetises – a view, a reef, a cathedral – do
not belong to it. The world’s dominant cruise companies
– Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian
– pay little towards the upkeep of the public goods
they live off. By incorporating themselves in overseas
tax havens with benign environmental and
labour laws – respectively Panama, Liberia and Bermuda
– cruising’s big three, which account for
three-quarters of the industry, get to enjoy low taxes
and avoid much irksome regulation, while polluting
the air and sea, eroding coastlines and pouring
tens of millions of people into picturesque ports of
call that often cannot cope with them.
Pre-pandemic
forecast:
Chinese travellers
were expected to
make 160 million
trips abroad
What goes for cruises goes for to most of the travel
industry. For decades, a small number of environmentally
minded reformists in the sector have tried
to develop sustainable tourism that creates enduring
employment while minimising the damage it
does. But most hotel groups, tour operators and
national tourism authorities – whatever their stated
commitment to sustainable tourism – continue to
prioritise the economies of scale that inevitably lead
to more tourists paying less money and heaping
more pressure on those same assets. Before the pandemic,
industry experts were forecasting that international
arrivals would rise by between three and
four per cent in 2020. Chinese travellers, the largest
and fastest-growing cohort in world tourism, were
expected to make 160 million trips abroad, a 27 per
cent increase on the 2015 figure.
The virus has given us a picture, at once frightening
and beautiful, of a world without tourism. We
saw what happens to our public goods when tourists
aren’t clustering to exploit them. Shorelines enjoy a
respite from the erosion caused by cruise ships the
size of canyons. Walkers stuck at home cannot litter
mountainsides. Intricate culinary cultures are no
longer menaced by triangles of defrosted pizza. It is
hard to imagine a better illustration of tourism’s
effects than our current holiday away from it.
Coronavirus has also revealed the danger of
overreliance on tourism, demonstrating in brutal
fashion what happens when the industry supporting
an entire community, at the expense of any
other more sustainable activity, collapses. On 7 May
026 topos ISSUE 118

2020, the UN World Tourism Organisation estimated
that earnings from international tourism
might be down 80 per cent in the year 2020 against
2019’s figure of 1.7 billion U.S. Dollar, and that
120 million jobs could be lost. Since tourism relies
on the same human mobility that spreads disease,
and will be subject to the most stringent and lasting
restrictions, it is likely to suffer more than almost
any other economic activity.
As tourism’s impact on the world has deepened,
so the global economy has come to depend on it.
After the freeze forced upon foreign travel –
unimaginable even some months ago – we have a
rare opportunity to extract ourselves from this
destructive cycle, and do things differently.
To accusations that it is spoiling the planet, the
tourism industry responds with an economic
argument: one in ten jobs in the world depend on it.
Governments tend to like tourism, because it
creates jobs in the time it takes a hotel to open and
the hot water to come on – and it brings in plenty of
foreign money.
Spain and Italy:
When room
occupation bottomed
out at 5 per cent
One industry advocate I spoke to quoted Lelei
Lelaulu, a development entrepreneur who, in 2007,
described tourism as “the largest voluntary transfer
of cash from the rich to the poor, the ‘haves’ to ‘have
nots’, in history”. Even if one allows for considerable
“leakage” – whereby much of tourists’ expenditure
doesn’t go to the destination country but to foreign
tour agencies, airlines and hotel chains whose
services they use – it cannot be denied that
Australians have spent liberally in Bali, Americans
in Cancún and Chinese in Bangkok.
At the end of January 2020, when the flow of Chinese
tourists to Europe dried up, Melissa Biggs
Bradley – the founder of Indagare, a high-end US
travel company, and a board member of the Center
for Responsible Travel – was called by Italian colleagues
who warned her: “Rome is empty. You have
no idea how devastating this is going to be.” In those
early days of the crisis, industry analysts reached for
reassuring precedents. In 2009, international tourist
arrivals fell by 4 per cent as a result of the global financial
crisis. The following year the industry
roared back with 6.7 per cent growth. After a series
of terrorist attacks in Turkey in 2016, tourists stayed
away, but Turkey’s loss was Spain’s gain, and the
Costa Blanca experienced a surge in arrivals.
It soon became clear that such comparisons
were little help in understanding a global disease
without a cure. In late March 2020, Bernstein, a
leading research firm, sent a note to investors that
replaced an earlier, merely gloomy assessment of
the hotel industry’s prospects with a properly cataclysmic
one. “Just two weeks ago we considered
80 per cent revenue declines ‘highly unlikely’, and
now adopt it as our base case,” the note ran. “How
naive we were!” And that was before room occupation
in Spain and Italy bottomed out at 5 per cent.
Tourism accounts for around 15 per cent of
Spain’s GDP and some 13 per cent of Italy’s. But
painful though its loss is for the most diversified
economies in southern Europe, it is life-threatening
for tourism’s dependencies, such as the Maldives,
where tourism contributes around a third of GDP,
or for emerging destinations like Georgia, where
visitor numbers have more than quadrupled in the
past decade.
Georgia: “One
of Japaridze’s former
guides, who used to
take tour groups to
the beautiful Svaneti
region of Georgia,
is now making ends
meet by delivering
food on his
motorbike.”
In April 2020, Edmund Bartlett, the tourism
minister of Jamaica – where the industry brings
in more than 50 per cent of the island’s foreign
currency – bemoaned the fact that there had
been “zero arrivals for Montego Bay’s airport,
zero arrivals for Kingston’s airport and zero
guests in hotels … on top of the 300,000 people
who are without jobs because all of the transportation
systems that support tourism are at a halt,
[because] the farmers who support tourism have
nowhere to sell their crops, [because] the attractions
… are closed.”
For all the money the industry usually brings
in, one of the prices of allowing a place to be taken
over by tourism is the way it distorts local development.
Farmers sell their land to the hotel chain,
only for the price of crops they once grew to
inflate beyond their reach. Water is diverted to the
golf course while the locals go short. The road is
paved as far as the theme park, not the school. In
its subordination of an economy to a powerful,
capricious, external motor, tourism dependency
has something in common with the aid dependency
that I observed as a reporter in Afghanistan
after the 2001 invasion. In both cases, the worst
threat is the possibility of sudden withdrawal.
topos 027

tourism after lockdown
Boosting
137 volcanic islands with beautiful beaches, lush nature,
modern infrastructure, and a welcoming culture: Hawai’i
is a dream destination for many. The 50th state of the
United States of America has long welcomed millions of
visitors every year. But the pandemic brought the island’s
tourism industry to its knees, begging international
visitors to delay their visit. Why was this necessary and
what is the way ahead for Hawai’i?
LAURA PUTTKAMER
Aloha
in Tourism
Photos: Edmund Garman on flickr_Honolulu_Waikiki Beach
034 topos ISSUE 118

Hawai’i ’s capital
Honolulu and its
world-famous Waikiki
Beach are a Mecca for
tourists, whereas
residents face challenges
such as overcrowding,
high cost of living and
environmental damages.
topos 035

tourism after lockdown
Accessing
Iceland’s volcanic activity has put the once anonymous
North Atlantic island into the spotlight in recent years.
Before the pandemic the vast wilderness and complexity of
the landscape attracted tourists like never before, which
eventually threatened to disbalance the fragile ecology of
virgin sites. When it comes to tackling the side effects of
tourism on the planners’ side, the Saxhöll stairway in
Snaefellsjökull national park is a successful example. In a
post-pandemic perspective, landscape architects and planners
may need to develop ways to guide and educate visitors
that include a greater awareness of the soul of a place.
ANNA-MARIA PERSHAGEN
Volcanic
Landscapes
052 topos ISSUE 118

Photo: Landslag
Saxhöll Stairway at
Iceland's Snaefellsjökull
glacier demonstrates how
landscape architects can
balance the conflict
between preserving
unique environments
while still pro viding
access to them.
topos 053

tourism after lockdown
Cruise Ship MS Azura
anchored off
Teignmouth during
lockdown.
Changing
Course
Only a few tourism sectors are as controversial as the
cruise ship industry: some people strongly oppose it,
others are fond of it. The latter group seems to be
growing, as cruises are attracting more passengers
every year. 2020 was supposed to be a record year,
but the pandemic ended the season before it began.
Yet the pandemic also marked a change of course for
an industry that has always been in transition since
its beginnings.
MAGDALENA SCHMIDKUNZ
Discussions about the cruise industry –
ranging from environmental concerns to the
very questions of how enjoyable holidays on
a ship can be – split people into two
camps: those who support it and those who
oppose it. There is hardly a divide as black
and white as cruise vacations, neither
camping vacations nor hotel vacations on the
Adriatic compare.
Among other things, critics see the
development of cruising into mass tourism
as a problem for people and nature. For a
long time, cruises were only affordable for
the wealthy and offered an opportunity to
celebrate a kind of high society lifestyle in
America that had actually long been a thing
of the past. Therefore, at the end of the 1960s,
Carnival Corporation & plc (then: Carnival
Cruise Lines), together with Royal Caribbean
Group (then: Royal Caribbean Cruises) and
Norwegian Cruise Line, decided to reorient
cruise tourism; turning the privilege of a few
into a vacation option for the masses. They
had ships built for the American market that
would appeal to the middle and working
classes alike. The new cruise ships from
Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian
hailed the motto “fun and sun for everyone”.
In this fashion, instead of fancy evening
gowns and jackets, passengers now moved
about the deck in jeans and T-shirts.
Suitable Cruise for everyone
The cruise giants continued to pursue their
“fun and sun” concept with conviction, even
though the industry increasingly suffered
from a fusty image of pensioners in the 1980s
and 90s. At the turn of the millennium,
Carnival Corporation & plc actually
succeeded in appealing to a new, young
audience with its subsidiary AIDA. It
Photo: Ray Harrington on Unsplash
072 topos ISSUE 118

invested billions of U.S. Dollars in the
construction of new so-called “fun ships”
along with targeted advertising campaigns.
To great economic success. These “fun ships”
offer an extensive entertainment program
consisting of come- together events and
exuberant parties – tailored to a wide variety
of target groups. Everyone’s idea of fun is
catered for: high-school graduates, heavy
metal fans, wine lovers, young families – the
list goes on and on, and there is a suitable
cruise offer for everyone.
The cruise crisis
The influx of passengers and the associated
construction of new and, above all, ever
larger ships, have caused the cruise industry
as a tourism sector to grow steadily since the
turn of the millennium. According to
cruisemarketwatch.com, an American
website that publishes statistics on the cruise
industry, passenger numbers increased by
6.6 per cent annually between 1990 and 2019.
But in 2020, the boom came to a halt. The
shipping companies’ fleets were forced into a
standstill for a total of eleven months. The
Covid pandemic ended the cruise season
before it could even begin. Two years later,
cruises are still underutilized, and passengers
are occasionally forced to terminate their
cruises early because Covid has gotten on
board unnoticed. Smaller shipping
companies are suffering from a severe lack of
revenue. Unlike the “big four” – Carnival
Corporation & plc, Royal Caribbean Cruises,
Norwegian Cruise Line and MSC Cruises –
they can only rely to a limited extent on
purely sea-based, so-called “blue voyages.”
They rely financially on stops with shore
excursions. Their ships can also only offer a
comparatively limited range of bars, casinos,
shopping and leisure facilities. The 5.000-bed
ship AIDAnova, on the other hand, has a film
studio, for example, which transmits
in-house developed TV shows on board to
screens in the cabins. Guests don’t even have
to leave their private rooms on the ship for
entertainment. Smaller liners simply cannot
offer this level of comfort at sea.
Although the major cruise companies
have been able to draw on more resources
and alternatives over the past two years, they
too have suffered from the constraints of the
pandemic. In 2020, the estimated revenue of
the global cruise industry was 4.3 billion U.S.
Dollars (see cruisemarketwatch.com).
Compared to the previous year, 2019, the
numbers represent an 88 per cent decline – a
loss for the industry that spares no cruise
line. But most cruise lines are nonetheless
optimistic about the future. After all, they
have already been able to increase their sales
again by 81.8 per cent in the pandemic year
2021 compared to 2020 – even if this growth
means the industry is still a long way from
reaching prepandemic levels.
Old becomes new
It may sound paradoxical, but not only
tourist shipping could suffer from the cruise
crisis in the longer term, but also the
environment. Intuitively, one would have to
say that the worse off the cruise industry is,
the better it is for the environment and the
climate. After all, every ship that doesn’t
leave port means less fossil fuel consumption
and fewer emissions of CO 2 , which accelerates
climate change. However, it is not
realistically foreseeable that cruises as an
industry will come to a complete halt, and
the pandemic-related, financial losses could,
on top of that, condition shipping companies
to invest less money in the future towards the
implementation of truly green and sustainable
cruise shipping. “All cruises to date are
powered by fossil fuels, most of them by
heavy fuel oil, the most toxic and dirty fuel
there is in the world,” says Sönke Diesener,
environmental officer of NABU, Germany’s
environmental association with the largest
membership. For cruise ships to be
climate-neutral and for shipping companies
to achieve the climate targets they have
set themselves, however, investment in
alternative propulsion systems and synthetic
fuels based on renewable electricity
would be imperative.
And there is indeed hope: “The pandemic
is a major challenge. But at least the shipping
companies we have been in contact with have
not put their environmental ambitions on
hold for the time being. That’s good news,”
says Sönke Diesener. As a trained geographer
specializing in the maritime context, he takes
a positive approach to these developments.
By 2040, Diesener says, it is indeed expected
that cruise shipping will be completely
climate neutral – despite or perhaps even
because of the pandemic? “Right now, we
assume that the pandemic period also had a
positive impact on the industry. Quite a few
old, very inefficient, cruise ships were
scrapped. Nearly 40 ships worldwide with the
worst environmental performance were
taken out of service.” They were either sold
or scrapped, and in some cases replaced
with new, more efficient ships – an important
long-term step toward a climateneutral
cruise industry.
Nevertheless, Sönke Diesener responds
with a definite “no” to the question if it is
perfectly sensible to seek one’s “sun and
fun” experience on a cruise ship several
times a year.
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