Edinburgh Napier University

  The air transport industry has experienced almost ceaseless growth (Graham, 2000) despite numerous factors that contributed to its slowing down. This growth comes from new travellers and present ones taking more or longer holidays. This trend is getting even bigger given that there are over 1.8 billion millennials all over the world (Neufeld, 2021), generating more than $165 billion in tourism receipts, almost 20% of the global tourism market (Kaihatu et al, 2020). At the same time travel shaming amongst the same age group has become apparent, particularly during and after the covid-19 pandemic (Huang et al, 2023).
The cost of travel to and from the destination and the cost of accommodation at the destination make up the travel cost, which will decide how much income must be allocated to travel. In turn, variables like exchange and inflation rates will have an impact on this (Graham, 2006). The increased monetary challenges in conjunction with global political turbulence would suggest that declining disposable income would result to weaker demand for leisure travel, but this has not materialised. At the same time there is increasing interest and demand for ‘slow tourism and ‘slow travel’ with ‘slow travel’ focusing mostly on s low carbon travel practices resulting in longer stays, less travel, enriched experience, emphasis of the journey itself, and a deeper connection with a place thus stressing more sustainable, responsible consumption practices (Klarin et al, 2023).
This paper explores the contradicting forces between slow travel, increased passenger demand for leisure traffic and monetary pressures affecting leisure demand focusing primarily in Europe. Slow tourism tends to focus more on quality slow paced tourism activities which are more linked to leisure than tourism or travelling, allowing the participants to explore further and deeper the attributes of the destination they are visiting.