Jacques Attali is the author and president of Positive Planet. He was an advisor to French President Francois Mitterrand and the first head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

The current crisis has brought much of the global travel industry to a standstill and the industry is slowly starting to wake up.

As in all sectors, many who work in it dream of a return to the world as it was: the same crowds, the same cheap airfares, the same travelers flocking to their homes from near and far, the same visitors crammed in Restaurants, museums, stadiums and theaters.

But shouldn’t we also take into account the lessons learned from the current crisis so as not to forget them before the consequences are felt even more terribly?

The current crisis teaches us in particular that travel of all kinds – especially international travel – must be regulated infinitely more tightly in order to avoid the spread of pandemics in the long term, to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels and to avoid protecting our heritage and our natural areas affect.

It would be sensible, for example, not to increase business travel, not to pile up in low-cost airlines, not to see cheap apartments by the sea in the Venice lagoon, nor millions of tourists on Thai beaches or in the streets and temples of Kyoto.

Getting to Europe from Asia or America is therefore becoming more difficult. Conversely, coming to Asia from the rest of the world for the simple pleasure of tourism will necessarily be limited.

Surely tourism as practiced today is not the main contributor to global warming, but it is; it is not the main factor in the destruction of nature, but it is; it’s not the main factor in the spread of pandemics, but one; it is not the main factor in reducing biodiversity, but it is.

And if we don’t admit it, whatever we’ve gained through more sensible behavior is lost through that kind of drift. In general, there is no point in tackling global warming with one hand if we are making it worse with the other.

Even if many will not admit it for a long time, we must have the courage to recognize that old-fashioned tourism is over. And all countries – especially Japan, for which it is very important – will have to take this into account.

Many countries and companies in the travel and tourism industry have now understood this. And behavior will change one way or another.

Some countries or cities will assume that tourism is reserved for the richest people, who pay high prices for plane tickets and can afford the limited – and therefore expensive – number of hotel rooms offered by countries or cities that want to protect them Inheritance and keep it for the rich. Others, more democratic, will set up lottery systems or quotas to set the number of people who can attend each year.

The tiny Kingdom of Bhutan appears to have chosen the first strategy. In France, the Louvre chooses the second; this will ultimately have an impact on the growth in the number of foreign tourists in Paris and even in France.

At the moment, the Asian countries don’t seem to have made up their minds yet. Besides that, China is starting to build replicas of European sites to show off to their tourists, thereby reducing travel to domestic cities. And again, they have to be reserved for either casual people or very rich people. All in all, if tourism does not change, in the future it will be reserved for those whom luck has served: that of money or that of fate.

Finally, others will understand that the future of the tourism industry no longer lies in the increase in visitor numbers, as was previously thought massively and anonymously, but in the considerable improvement in its impact on the environment and nature.

Many hotel companies have already understood this and are starting to fundamentally revise their property holdings and practices to reduce their environmental impact. This will be extended to other areas of activity of a particular dimension of tourism that certain cities and certain companies have always practiced: the hospitality industry. That is, everything from greeting to attention to empathy to support the well-being of those we receive.

Hospitality is not just about natural gifts. As Japanese culture wonderfully shows, hospitality requires very specific techniques, often refined over millennia, which will soon also be used in many areas other than tourism and which could open up new perspectives for this threatened industry.

A manager of a hotel in Tokyo has put futons on tatami mats: Hospitality requires very special techniques that have often been refined over millennia. © AP

For example, corporate headquarters and hospitals would benefit from using such hospitality skills. Companies can find ways to keep their employees who are increasingly distant from teleworking. The quality of the greeting at the workplace plays an important role for the loyalty to a company. Headquarters must give employees a warm welcome, show the employer’s respect for their employees and do everything possible to motivate them to work there.

Hospitals around the world could also improve their hotel dimension better by using their specific hotel-like skills even more than some already, for patients and caregivers as well as for accompanying families.

And we know how important the quality of the reception area and the hotel dimensions of a care facility are for treatment. Add to this the huge future market for dependencies in aging countries, which is already the case in Japan and will soon be the case in China, Europe and the rest of the world.

The global tourism industry will find new, exciting, profitable and socially useful markets.

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