Holiday at Home
March 7, 2007
Faced with international terrorism, the war in Iraq and bird flu, the travel industry is used to dealing with one crisis after another, but participants at the International Tourism Exchange (ITB) in Berlin now have a new reason for concern: vacationers who choose to stay home to prevent global warming.
Visitors to the world's biggest travel exhibition would need to climb aboard a plane before they're able to see most of the 184 regions of the world being presented by nearly 11,000 exhibitors, and that's exactly what some environmental protection organizations are trying to avoid.
Planes hurting the planet
"Whoever wants to do something for climate protection should avoid plane trips and vacation in Germany," said Manfred Stock of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
Short flights are especially harmful to the environment, according to Greenpeace Germany head Brigitte Behrens.
"Weekend trips by plane are out of bounds from a climate point of view," she said. "Discount flights at cut-rate prices should be forbidden."
Some 20 percent of Germans have traveled on discount airlines and would also consider booking a low-cost flight, according to a TNS Infratest survey.
Environmental protection groups have called for an end to Germany protecting jet fuel from taxes, a step German Economics Minster Michael Glos rejected.
"What's the sense of one airline paying a fuel tax and its competition flying the same route without added costs?" he asked, insisting on an international response to climate protection.
Balance between economy and environment
Glos said aircraft were responsible for 1.5 percent of climate-damaging emissions worldwide. The European Union said aviation makes up 3 percent of direct greenhouse gas emissions, though it added that the estimates do not factor in indirect warming effects.
Glos also said more needs to be taken into account than the environment, as travel plays an important role in the country's economy, and additional taxes could hurt competition by making German carriers more expensive and endangering airline jobs.
Germans spent about 60.5 billion euros ($79.4 billion) on travel last year, and the Vacation and Travel Research Group estimated that 70 percent of Germans were planning at least one trip in 2007, the highest percentage since 2001 and a 3-percent increase over 2006.
A changing industry
Travel industry officials said they realized climate change would be of growing importance.
"It is an issue we have to face as a sector," said Mario Köpers, a spokesman for Thomas Cook Travel.
ITB head Martin Buck told the Süddeutsche Zeitung on Monday that he was concerned about the travel industry's future.
"In a few years it will no longer be chic for large portions of the population to poison the environment with too much CO2 during vacations," he said.
TUI spokesman Robin Zimmerman told the paper the current political discussion was being exaggerated and had "little to do with German vacation reality."
About a third of Germans spend their vacations in their home country, and travel giants TUI and Thomas Cook both said Germany was second only to Spain as a destination for German vacations.