The Social Travel Summit is an annual gathering of professional travel bloggers and influencers from around the world. This year, in 2019, the event was hosted in Ravenna in Italy. The Social Travel Summit is a platform where people in the traveling industry discuss different issues related to tourism and influencer marketing. Here, they think about what improvements there should be made. One of the biggest topics of 2019 was sustainability. How can we continue traveling and still watch out for our planet? Futurist Liselotte Lyngsø gave a keynote at this year’s Social Travel Summit. She talked about traveling, sustainability and trust. 

Travel bloggers are becoming the new authority

Travel bloggers are taking over the guiding role from traditional authorities. Telling us where to go, what to see. Because of their authority, people follow their lead. Therefor, a lot of them also try to travel in far more sustainable ways. Thus, the bloggers have a huge responsibility with regard to making traveling a part of a sustainable solution rather than the problem. And our need for traveling will only increase. 1) People prefer travel over buying more stuff.2) A growing middle class wants to travel the world.3) The internet is turning us into grasshoppers all opting for the same destinations.4) Elderly people are enjoying retirement by seeing the world rather than staying at home.

Watch the video about The Social Travel Summit on Youtube

If you want to read more about Liselotte’s view on traveling, here is a danish article about solo traveling.