Suggestions
Audrey Scott
Sustainable Tourism & Marketing Strategist | Co-Founder at Uncornered Market | Travel that Cares for Our Planet and its People
Audrey Scott is a seasoned tourism and marketing strategist dedicated to promoting sustainability within the travel industry. With a passion for creating experiences that benefit local communities, travelers, and the environment, Audrey excels in developing inclusive and immersive strategies that leave a positive impact. Co-founder of Uncornered Market, she leverages her extensive global experience to assist organizations in communicating their mission effectively, creating innovative tourism products, and developing sustainable marketing initiatives. Audrey's educational background includes a BA in Economics and French Language from the University of Virginia and an MBA in International Management from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. Throughout her career, she has held various key roles in renowned organizations such as USAID, Helvetas, and Deloitte, focusing on tourism development, marketing, and sustainability. Audrey's expertise lies in destination positioning, product development, storytelling, digital marketing, and sustainability communication.
Highlights
A lot of destinations are trying to promote train travel as a low carbon alternative to flying, but it's not always so easy or convenient for travelers to do this. I'm a train buff so this is not a hard sell for me, but after spending a lot of time on trains in Europe earlier this summer with a 2-month Interrail, here are a few thoughts on how to make train travel the easier and more desired choice...and not only because it is the more sustainable choice.
Note: This is for train systems that have the capacity to take additional tourist passengers as we don't want to create overtourism problems on trains that squeeze out local passengers 🤦♀️
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Market and show train travel as a part of the "full travel experience" in your destination beyond it being just a form of transport to get from point A to point B. This includes highlighting the local train culture and history, the beauty of the routes, and opportunity to connect with local people and other travelers on the train. For example, it's hard to imagine visiting Switzerland or Japan without taking the train as this has become part of the "destination experience." It's exciting to see more tour companies creating rail-focused journeys and highlighting train travel as an experience.
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Make train travel affordable and flexible with discount cards or travel passes for visitors so it makes economic sense, as well being a more sustainable choice. Interrail / Eurrail passes are good options for Europe if you're doing a lot of train travel, but regional or national efforts (e.g., Germany's Deutschland Ticket at €49/month for regional trains and public transport) or other train pass cards can make it more convenient and less expensive for visitors to just hop on a train.
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Make searching for and booking train travel as easy as it is now for flights. While there have been improvements over the last years with OTAs like Omio, it's still much easier to book a flight online, especially multi-segment/multi-country journeys, than a series of train tickets. I would love to see top OTA sites like Kayak, Skyscanner or Expedia would include train options for popular routes (e.g., Berlin to Munich or the new overnight Berlin to Paris train). While Google Flights does list trains as an option (yay!), it still isn't as easy to buy tickets directly once you click on it.
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Emphasize the lower stress*, more comfortable seats, and slow travel benefits of train travel. Avoiding stressful airports and having a comfortable seat (ideally with a table) are both big bonuses for me about train travel, not to mention being able to take in changes in landscape, architecture, contours that only land travel can provide. (*I know train stations can also be stressful places when there are cancellations and delays, but often it's without the security checks and other stressors.)
What are some other ways destinations can further nudge travelers towards choosing train travel?
I started my day reading several different articles that my father sent me about overtourism in Europe (when I was young and he lived abroad he used to send me envelopes full of newspaper clippings on topics he thought I'd find interesting and now I get emails with links to articles 😉 ). While overtourism is endlessly written about and discussed (just take a look around on LinkedIn posts if you work in tourism!), there were a couple of things from these articles that struck me. There is so much we can do better.
(Also, it's clear that we need reintroduce The Travel Foundation's excellent Invisible Burden Report so destinations and policy makers understand and calculate the full impact of tourism on infrastructure, natural resources, socio-economy, etc.)
Southern Europe: https://lnkd.in/eSJhifex
💡 "Where does all the money go that travelers to Mediterranean countries spend? A large part of it goes to airlines, major hotel chains, international companies, and the cruise industry." - Paul Peeters, Breda University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands
🚨 Economic leakages. We often see this topic researched and discussed in the context of developing or emerging destinations, but it's a very real and destructive element in these developed destinations experiencing overtourism. Every time we see a big number thrown around regarding the economic benefit of tourism (which is often used to justify it), we need to ask tough questions to understand: how much of this actually stays and is the REAL economic impact? How can we increase this REAL number?
💡 "Is the promotion of so-called 'high-quality tourism' really the solution? No...focusing on luxury tourism would just exacerbate inequalities. Better-off tourists had higher expectations, consumed more water, tended to take more short trips, and could also buy property if necessary. This boosted 'gentrification and real estate speculation' which had a much more direct impact on the lives of local residents."- Macia Blázquez-Salom, an activist in Palma de Mallorca
🚨 "High quality" or "high spend" tourism isn't necessarily the "solution." We've seen many destinations with strategies to attract "high spend" tourists (which are often called "high quality" but I think there is more to quality than spend) as a way to address overtourism or maintain the same income, but with lower visitor numbers. It's important to understand the full impact of high spend tourist behaviors and unintended negative consequences.
Focus on Athens: https://lnkd.in/eQYVwBjq
💡 "Each visitor brings €0.40 to the city, and we haven’t seen this money yet. We need sustainable tourism that doesn’t worsen city inequalities.” - Harris Doukas, Athens Mayor
🚨 Only €0.40 per visitor?? 🤯
"Against tourism in community spaces" - Valencia, Spain
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