Why Thomas Cook is finally not sustainable ?
In 2018, more than 1.4 billion tourists traveled the world, according to the UNWTO (World Tourism Organization), the second largest increase since 2010 (+ 6%). Which makes tourism one of the most important industries in the world. In addition, tourism is an industry that contributes to the happiness of people, in a sense it is a positive industry. So how is it that Thomas Cook, a pioneer in the tourism industry, is declared bankrupt in 2019?
How was the Thomas Cook model?
They were focused on 5 key external trends:
- Climate Change/ Ethical and environmental regulations: Tourism sector represent around 8% of global carbon emissions. So, it’s a huge challenge for Thomas Cook. Between 2017 and 2018, emissions decreasing of 28 million point of turnover. But it stays huge, from 484 to 456 (in million point of turnover). According to “Atmosphere Report”, they are in the top 10 of the “World’s most fuel-efficient airline in the 2018”
(Plastic sea in Asia)
- Changing customers demand: Tourism industry have a huge impact on world pollution and Thomas Cook is one of the major actors of this industry, so, Thomas Cook is prioritizing responding to customer concerns through their animal welfare and plastic reduction programmed.
- Geopolitical challenges: It’s one of the biggest problems for the tourism industry, so they decided to only propose safe destinations, for example there are no trip to Syria.
- Technological changes: Technology enhance client experience but efficiency of the firm too. But as we seen in previous article, they developed it too late.
- Diversity, Equality and Fairness: They are a lot of inequalities between gender, nationalities … in the world. So, Thomas Cook have a politic of recruiting without discrimination to help tourist live their cultural experience.
(Employees of the med club, one of Thomas Cook's partners, where we could see the diversity)
What can we conclude of these guidelines, in term of ethic, they have the good behavior, because they try to reduce what the causes (not alone). But the problem is the same than in other articles, the lack of technological changes, and it’s for this reason (mainly) that caused bankruptcy
Paul Leterc
Sources:
-https://www.oceanicsociety.org/blog/2141/join-oceanic-society-and-sodastream-in-fighting-ocean-plastic-pollution
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