Using the SDGs to Reset Travel and Tourism after COVID-19: Adopting a Culture of Health

The COVID-19 pandemic represents a health crisis with profound economic impacts that served to amplify disruption in the travel and tourism (T&T) sector. Sustainability, health, and business are intimately entwined in T&T such that pandemic risk mitigation measures, from social distancing and closure of airports, resorts, and hotels, materially damaged the sector. While reduced T&T activity may have alleviated some of the negative impacts of T&T on people and the planet, it presented an opportunity for businesses and destinations to consider how they would come back. The sector can ‘build back better’ by pursuing sustainability. More sustainable T&T could help fragile ecosystems to recover and enable the fullest contribution of the sector to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Many leaders of T&T business are now looking beyond improving operational sustainability to think more about strategic matters and the systems in which they operate. This latest pandemic could prove to be an important accelerator in T&T’s pursuit of sustainability and the SDGs. The ‘Culture of Health’ framework could help the sector advance sustainable T&T, drawing out the trade-offs and dilemmas presented by its activities.