Even though I’m no longer actively travel blogging, I still keep in touch with friends in the industry. We’re a month into the tourist season, and from what I’m hearing, bookings are down and cancellations are up. My friends in Berat, in Albania, don’t own the hotel they manage, they just work there, and they know how this goes. If the revenue doesn’t come in, the owner will just say, “I don’t have the money to pay you.” Not redundancy, not negotiation. Just, I can’t pay you. Worker protections aren’t exactly robust in Albania. You show up, you work, and you hope the money comes through. They’re not at the point where panic is setting in, but they are worried.
The reason the bookings aren’t there is obvious enough. People are watching the US war on Iran and hesitating. Oil prices are climbing, which means everything costs more. Flights, fuel, food, all of it. Inflation is already creeping back, and by the end of the year, it’ll be a real problem again. When the British Prime Minister suggests people stay at home and save their money, it’s definitely not a good sign.
In Albania, there aren’t a lot of other options for work. In so many cases it’s tourism or nothing. When the tourists don’t come, people don’t just lose income. They lose the only opportunity to get by. A war on the other side of the world reaches hotels in Berat.
It hits me too, if I’m honest. I still earn a big chunk of my income from my travel blog. I can see where this is heading. By the end of the year, inflation will be back with force, and no one’s going to be browsing Christmas market guides, let alone booking hotels and tours. My income will take another hit, along with everyone else in the industry.
I was reluctant to write about this, as let’s face it, it’s nothing compared to the death and destruction in Iran or Lebanon or Gaza or any current conflicts. Plus you have the indirect impacts of the Strait of Hormuz being closed, like the 32 million people who could fall into poverty. All because of the absurdity of the US and Israeli regimes. People outside the US often say they don’t care about US politics, but it clearly affects all of us, directly or not.
It’s not just that war disrupts travel. It’s that the entire travel industry runs on fossil fuels. Of course flights are the most visible issue. The price of jet fuel has more than doubled, more and more flights are being cancelled, and costs are being passed on to consumers. Then we have the food at your hotel that arrives by diesel truck, from farms running diesel machinery and using fossil-fuel-derived fertiliser. The electricity powering your room, the gas cooking your dinner, all of it traces back to the same source. A global fuel crisis hits everything. How is travel ever supposed to be sustainable in that environment? Not just environmentally. Economically too.
It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t travel. If anything, it might matter more now than ever. When you travel, places we hear about on the news stop being abstract. The children killed in a school stop being a number on a screen. You’ve walked those streets, you’ve eaten in those restaurants, you’ve met people and liked them. Travel makes the world smaller and harder to look away from. It reminds you that everywhere you go, people want the same things. A comfortable life. Food on the table. Their kids in school. Safety.
So if you do travel, make it count. Stay at the small hotel, not the chain. Eat at the local place, not the multinational. Skip the cruise. For people like the ones I know in Berat, that’s the difference between getting paid and not.
What are you doing this year? Still planning to travel? Cancelled anything? Saving instead? I’d love to hear what you’re thinking.
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