Editorial The Airline Industry and the ‘Extinction Rebellion’ At the beginning of this year, I contacted a Swedish travel blogger on behalf while handling an influencer campaign for flybmi. Would she be interested in a trip to
No thanks, came the reply. I’m not flying in 2019 to reduce my carbon footprint. I thought of her during the “Extinction Rebellion” protests in European and North American cities, which are on-going as I write this. In London, this included a protest at Heathrow Airport from people born after 1990. In particular, the scale of the protests led me to wonder whether the airline industry is prepared for what could be a significant generational change in attitudes. easyJet calls millennials “generation easyJet” - mid 20 and 30 somethings who love to fly cheaply, and who have benefited enormously from the explosion in low cost travel. But will those attitudes still hold true in a decade from now? It’s worth noting that many of those in the forefront of current environmental protests are in their teens or early 20s. For example, 16 year old Greta Thunberg, currently nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Or the Climate Change Strike High Schoolers, who took to the streets in cities from Auckland to Montreal. Many of them share the point of view of my Swedish travel blogger contact - they see air travel as something to be rationed. Almost every airline has some kind of environmental programme, and every month you read about this or that airline dropping plastic from its on-board cater-
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Airline Marketing Monthly | April / May 2019
Munich, inclusive of flights and hotels?