The Ecological and Social Power of Slow Tourism for Sensitive Yet Profitable Environmental Sustainability: International Insights for Airline and Business Travel from Intercultural Student and Spiritual Stakeholders

Abstract

Slow travel’s key themes are environmentalism, sustainability, and low-to-no carbon emissions. Slowness has several practical and spiritual dimensions of meaning, central to which  are environmental ones. As an opposite to slow tourism, airline travel has developed quickly in terms of airplanes, liberalization and technology, all related to the industry’s efforts at more sustainability, but conflicting and seeking solutions within the airline and tourism industries, their customers and the global environment. Business travelers’ motivations, decision-making and beneficiaries moved environmental and sustainability considerations up on its agenda, in contrast to traditional forms of business encounters. Youth and student travel grows in size and importance corresponding to the complex matrix of interests of its travelers and societies. Religious tourism has become a key sector of global tourism, with implications for religious sites’ economies and environments. Altogether, increasing social and environmental considerations of fast travel forms and competitive industries as well as outlooks have come to be inspired by as well as enriched by more contemplative forms of slower tourism. It turns out that traditionally fast and less environmentally friendly and sustainable forms of travel and tourism approach many philosophical and practical tenets of slow tourism forms, especially sustainability, while traditionally slower and more contemplative kinds of tourism re-orient themselves to accommodate modern global travel facilities such as an increasing use of technology. This is an ongoing and interactive development that promises to put high demands on, yet likewise to benefit the here analyzed stakeholders and forms of travel.