The Future of the Travel Industry Is at Stake From This Morning On

Morning in America will come in a few hours. It will look like a morning, but it may not feel like one for lots and lots of us.

Certainly the Skift team — now 35 of us as of next week — curious and optimistic about the future of a multicultural America and the promise of travel, is in shock and will be for a while to come.

Every bit of travel news, every trend, every analysis, every product we have put out since we started four and a half years ago, everything speaks to the progressive, interconnected future of the world, it is the reason for our existence, it is the reason for existence of our industry, the world’s largest industry.

When we wrote our manifesto that travel — the literal movement of humans — is now the geopolitical center of the world, we wrote these lines: “The geopolitical realities of our world are worth embracing by the travel industry, instead of ignoring them or, worse still, wishing them away. And even more so, travelers will reward the industry for it by traveling more, by being more aware of the world and travel’s key place in it, rather than staying in isolationist bubbles for people to indulge in when they need an escape once in a while.”

Those of us in the travel industry have to figure out how we move from here, and the biggest role we have is to fight for the right of free movement of people — ALL of us, every color, every race, every orientation — in and out of America and beyond, and the future of a connected world outside of the neo-isolationist bubbles.

Travel is the most progressive expression of human curiosity. It behooves us to take on more activist roles on behalf of our right to travel, and the future of the travel.

We at Skift will try and make sense of the epochal changes ahead, for ourselves, for this industry we so dearly love, and for the world curious about the future of travel and our industry.

Rafat Ali, CEO and Founder and Jason Clampet, Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder