The largest gathering of travel industry professionals in the world since the pandemic began wrapped up in London yesterday with the three-day live conference having welcomed exhibitors from more than 100 countries and regions, more than 6,000 pre-registered buyers from 142 countries, and travel professionals from all over the world.

Responsible tourism was the key theme for the event, which took place at London’s ExCel Centre Nov. 1-3.

Dubbed a “perfect platform for recovery in 2022,” the annual event – the largest English-language travel trade show in the world – featured thousands of business meetings, press conferences, awards ceremonies, and numerous conferences, among them:

• The UNWTO, WTTC & WTM Ministers’ Summit, at which tourism ministers from around the world pledged to work towards the recovery of the sector with a focus on investing in sustainable travel

• The International Tourism and Investment Conference – dubbed Invest, Finance and Restart – which heard that the developing “human resources” to replace workers lost during the pandemic is the key to travel’s recovery, and

• The travel technology event, Travel Forward, which revealed that one in four consumers spend more time researching holidays than they did before the pandemic, but that the majority of searches are for late bookings.

Meanwhile, during a session entitled “Fixing Travel’s Broken Business Model,” David Goodger of Oxford Economics, declared: “We are optimistic that we are past the worst. The economy is rebounding. It’s a consumer-led boom that we are looking at. People have had forced savings and they are spending it on travel. The year ahead, we do expect to see much stronger activity.”

Also among the week’s highlights was the release of the annual WTM Industry Report, which stated that younger people in Britain are increasingly turning to travel agents to book holidays because of the confusion and problems seen during the pandemic.

The survey of 1,000 consumers found 22% of those aged 35-44 said they were more likely to use an agent, along with 21% of those aged 22-24 and 20% of those aged 18 to 21.

The report also revealed that most of the 700 trade professionals quizzed for the report are expecting 2022 sales to match or beat 2019.

Furthermore, nearly 60% of travel executives believe sustainability has become the industry’s top priority.

Harold Goodwin, WTM’s responsible tourism expert, warned that the aviation sector will need to be regulated, unless it cuts its own carbon footprint and that as other sectors decarbonise, global aviation will become a larger proportion of emissions, rising to about 24% by 2050 if current trends continue.