The Travel Tales with Fergal Podcast has two special Travel Insiders episodes with travel industry experts this week. They tell us why they love the travel business and transport us to their favourite destinations.
The first interview out today is with Pol O’Conghaile, the Travel Editor of the Irish Independent newspaper. This episode really fuels the travel wanderlust as he gives the inside scoop on day-dream worthy hidden gems and must go to locations abroad and bucket list locations in Ireland.
Pol talks extensively about the predicted travel industry trends in 2021 and beyond. The latest news on the Covid vaccines will hopefully mean holiday travel will begin again next summer.
However, he noted a word of caution when saying “I read a report this week and it was the most pessimistic I have seen because it predicted that we will not return to 2019 levels of air travel until 2029”.
“Will this year change how we travel? I have been following a lot of the industry research on this and a lot of consumer sentiment surveys say people will look at travel differently in the post-pandemic era. Words like travel better, conscientious, ethically, sustainably, less crowd, safe, nature and outdoors are coming up”
“The surveys say people will be more willing to spend more to get to trips right so as not to be frustrated by crowds and inferior product”.
Pol feels that cities will face a huge challenge to attract tourism and will struggle to bounce back next year. They will have to find new ways of marketing themselves.
“This could mean a great opportunity for tourism in Ireland and particularly rural Ireland with people looking for uncrowded outdoors offerings in a sate environment”.
He wonders will this break in travel due to the pandemic be just long enough for people to take stock how they travel and allow a reset or will people be lured by cheap flight deals back to mass tourist holidays once again.
The Travel Insider Series continues this Thursday with Holly Rubenstein, who hosts the Travel Diaries Podcast, which is the UK’s No.1 Travel Podcast.
The Travel Tales with Fergal Podcast drops every Tuesday on all podcast platforms and people can follow all his updates on @traveltaleswithfergal on Instragram and Facebook and @FergalTravel on Twitter.
The podcast website is https://shows.acast.com/travel-tales-with-fergal
