CRITICAL THINKING
INVA S ION TOURIST
Rising travel logistics solutions could be as instructive for the DOD as for private enterprise.
by Claudia Flisi B
lame it on Tomas Cook. In 1851, the British entrepreneur created the first “pack- age tour,” organizing a group of his countrymen to visit London together with the same scheduled itinerary. Before that, the only people who had been able to indulge in leisure travel—especially the Grand Tours of major European cities—were the privi-
leged few who made their arrangements on an individual basis. Now, suddenly, the bourgeoisie could travel to the same places, albeit not as luxuriously.
Mass market tourism began to take hold in the wake of Cook’s innovations. Fast forward another century, and leisure travel exploded after World War II, thanks to a series of overlapping devel- opments: the growth of the airline industry; improved transportation infrastructure in general (cars, buses, trains, ships and planes); the increased affluence of the middle class; and the intro- duction of paid vacation days for employees.
Today, massive tourist invasions are normal. Upwards of 50 million people will invade the city of Paris in 2025, and a similar number is projected for Rome. Venice, a city of 50,000 people, tries to cope with more than 20 million visitors a year. Far-flung destinations like Antarctica are not immune: Tat white wilderness, bigger than Australia, registered fewer than 8,000 visitors two decades ago but may surpass 120,000 in 2025. Te global travel market, estimated to be worth about $12 trillion in 2024, is growing at a compound annual rate of 5.4%. Tis means that the market will double in size by 2035, and it is already 14 times the size of the 2024 U.S. Depart- ment of Defense (DOD) budget.
So, how has the travel industry been able to keep up with this staggering volume of people, the equipment needed to transport them and the supplies required to feed and house them?
Te solutions could be as instructive for the DOD as for private enterprise, since many of the issues they face are analogous. Fortunately, technology has evolved dramatically in half a century
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