subject: Please Note the Emergency Exits Located at the Front, Middle, and Rear of the Aircraft! [print this page] Please Note the Emergency Exits Located at the Front, Middle, and Rear of the Aircraft!
Does the title sound familiar? It is a phrase you hear from the smiling flight attendants every time you fly, accompanied by a plethora of other warnings and instructions you are supposed to remember when your flight is falling 30,000 feet at 400 mph. No matter how many times I fly, I never understand why airlines place emergency instruction cards in front of you. When a plane is about to crash there is no way i'm going to pull out my emergency card and read about what I'm supposed to do, I'm going to "put my head between my legs and kiss my butt goodbye" (to quote a movie I recently watched while in the company of children, Chicken Run). Maybe you feel differently, I don't know, anyway I'm done with my slight rant on emergency instructions.
The real reason you should familiarize yourself with the above phrase is because the travel industry in about to get a lot busier. Amadeus, a company that provides technology to the travel industry, and Oxford Economics, a forecasting consultancy, have encouraging news for the bankrupt, merging, acquiring, ranting flight attendant, little-profit-if-any airline and travel industries. I present to you the Amadeus Travel Gold Rush 2020 report and infographic. Essential reading for anyone involved in airlines, aircraft manufacturing, or travel and tourism industries. The global study reveals future travel profitability drivers, how almost extinct travel agents can adjust to changing travel and tourism trends, and modifications airlines will have to make.
According to the study, the Asia-Pacific region takes the title for most significant trend, with a shift in arrivals to the region accounting for 24.2% of global arrivals in 2020, spending $606 billion or 28.1% of the market. Asia-Pacific residents will also increase travel spending, forecasted to make up 32.3% or $603 billion, and account for 27% of the world travel in 2020. The infographic illustrates these trends quite nicely, putting these incomprehensible numbers into an easy to read graph. Global visitors in is expected to rise from 898,838,000 in 2010 to 1,342,750,000 to 2020, and global residents out following suit with 1,054,750,000 in 2010 to 1,658,139,000 in 2020. I don't know about you, but I think these numbers are astonishing.
With global travel spend projected to double between 2010 and 2020, how will the travel and tourism industries adapt? According to this aviation research, future aircrafts will need to be able to fly longer with different amenities to accommodate both the older travellers who are set to rise in importance as well as the classless cabins, where travellers are able to select the in-flight experience they wish to have. Travel agents will need to provide experiences, not just destinations. Airlines will need to increase or readjust routes to facilitate the changing travel and tourism trends. I told you the travel industry was about to get a lot busier, and it's only 2010. Hopefully now you understand why you should familiarize yourself with emergency instructions, not that I think your plane is going to crash, but maybe you should pay attention just in case.
If you'd like a bit more information you can always check out the fantastic infographic or if you're more of a numbers person download the full travel report.
