Sounding Off: No matter the state of travel, sustainability must be a priority

Each Friday, PhocusWire dissects and debates an industry trend or new development covered by PhocusWire that week.

Ah, thank goodness 2021 is here and vaccines are coming and the traveling public is going to get on the road again!

After a devastating past 12 months, we can get hit the road to recovery and, within a year or so, everything will be back to 2019 levels again.

Rejoice!

There are far too many people in the industry that are thinking this way. And it's wrong.

How dare we make such a suggestion, given the trauma of 2020 and the desperate need to let people return to their jobs and customers to planes, hotels, rentals, vehicles and experiences.

But it shouldn't take people long to cast their minds back to 2019 and the momentum around putting sustainability on the agenda, driven in a significant way by teenage Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.

It would be difficult to analyze just how much of the tiny steps that the industry was taking at the time (at least verbally) was just lip-service to the zeitgeist.

The climate change clock is ticking - both ecologically and from a regulatory perspective under the terms of the Paris Agreement, which the U.S. has rejoined after a Donald Trump-imposed hiatus.

Travel brands MUST look at their efforts on the sustainability agenda now, during the recovery rather than as a line item to tackle once operations are back to decent levels.

This focus will ensure that some positive action is put in place, as well as brands and their executives with influence over strategy being able to look people in the year in 2030 and say they made the best use of their time and the opportunity a decade before.