The Forum’s Industry Community for Aviation, Travel and Tourism is a high-level community of peers dedicated to ensuring the long-term sustainability of our industry and society. Chief executives and chairs constitute the Industry Governors, who provide leadership, define the industry agenda and drive change.Through the industry agenda, the community aims to address the following question: How can the aviation, travel and tourism industry continue to make a real difference to the lives of millions of people by driving growth and job creation whilst ensuring a secure, seamless and memorable experience?

Industry Agenda

The Aviation, Travel and Tourism Community Governors identified security in travel, industry competitiveness and the industry’s digital transformation as priorities for 2017. Airline regulatory frameworks, job creation and sustainability remain other important issues.

Security in Travel: Ensuring the secure and seamless movement of people through enhanced collaboration and data sharing is paramount. This project is part of the System Initiative on Shaping the Future of Mobility. Publications highlighting the community’s work include our reports entitled digital borders, security in travel and smart travel. Other initiatives focusing on digital identity and outbreaks, are also indirectly addressing the issue of security in travel.Competitiveness: The community is engaging in dialogue and shaping policies relating to travel and tourism competitiveness. For the past eleven years, the World Economic Forum has engaged key industry and thought leaders to carry out an in-depth analysis of the Travel & Tourism Competitiveness of economies around the world. The resulting Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report provides a platform for multi-stakeholder dialogue with the objective of achieving a strong and sustainable T&T industry capable of contributing effectively to international economic development. Building on the Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report, we carried out an in-depth analysis on India entitled Incredible India 2.0, which considers how India should enhance its value proposition and create an enabling environment for the country's travel and tourism industry. 

Digital transformation: The community assessed the implications of digitization on the industry and society, specifically considering the travel experience, the digital enterprise and the creation of an enabling travel system. The project entitled the Digital Transformation of Industries is part of the System Initiative on Shaping the Future of Digital Economy and Society. Publications highlighting the work in this field can be found here as well as the deep dive on the Aviation, Travel & Tourism Industry.

Airline ownership: The community proposes a new regulatory model for foreign investment in airlines that is driven by public-private cooperation. Publications highlighting the community’s ideas include our white paper entitled A New Regulatory Model for Foreign Investment in Airlines.

Past Projects:

The Connected World project was a cross-industry project that looked at scenarios for how travel, transport and supply chains could be more integrated in 2025. It also explored new business models that enable and support an integrated approach.

Safeguarding Aviation and Travel Value Chains Against Corruption. Through the Forum's Partnering Against Corruption Initiative, this project was an in-depth review of the corruption and compliance challenges facing the aviation and travel industries. The report can be found here.

Sustainability: To better understand the gaps in measuring sustainability, the industry will be compiling data to create a dashboard, in turn enabling a better grasp of what information is available and where there are still gaps. Through a greater understanding of metrics, the industry aims to make more informed commitments towards improving sustainability.

The Manufacturing for Growth project built on the insights from the Future of Manufacturing initiative with a series of dialogues at regional events for manufacturing executives and policy-makers. It focused on the linkages between advanced manufacturing, economic growth and employment.