BERLIN — While hoteliers are ultimately responsible for the on-property experience of guests, there's a large portion of the travel experience they have no control over, and Radisson Hotel Group CEO Federico González Tejera said he wishes government officials would take the same level of responsibility for their piece of the travel journey.
During a session at the International Hospitality Investment Forum in Berlin, González Tejera said the airport experiences across the globe need to be more uniform and seamless, but ultimately that's not what government officials answer for.
"Nobody owns it," he said. "If any of us have to wait today for three hours in the airport, who pays? Who is responsible? ... When we work on public-private collaboration, you need either ownership and responsibility from the public sector or ownership and responsibility from the private sector that comes with concrete initiatives. But if there is no concrete responsibility, things cannot be moved, and that's why we've suffered."
The lack of collaboration isn't just an issue between private entities and governments but between governments themselves, said Gloria Guevara, president and CEO at the World Travel & Tourism Council and former Mexican secretary of tourism.
"After 9/11, governments didn't work together, and we implemented different protocols," she said. "If you go to airports today, in some they ask you to remove your shoes. In some airports, you [remove] your shoes. In some, it's the water. The protocol is different, and we need to catch up in that regard."
Globally, there are technologies that can help make travel more straightforward, including biometrics and digital passports and visas, Guevara said. But she reiterated that the approach has been scattershot, noting it's more streamlined in parts of the world such as Asia.
"I think there needs to be more political will, and at the same time, more collaboration between governments and with the private sector," she said.
González Tejera pointed to Saudi Arabia as a government that has strongly prioritized travel and had made decisions that support that.
"What Saudi has done in [recent] years, I haven't seen in many other places," he said.
Some markets that have struggled with overtourism problems, such as Vienna and Barcelona, also need to come to terms with the fact that their problems stem less from having too much demand as they do from a lack of infrastructure and planning to support it, González Tejera said.
"Nearly any town in the world today could be doing a forecast of how many people are going to be there," he said. "In Madrid or Venice this weekend, you can have the planes that are arriving, the transport, the hotels. So the point is you need to take [that information] and make a decision of what is good, what is bad, when you stop.
"It's not the tourist who is [creating the problem]. It's the lack of decisions and the lack of definition and planning for what you want that creates that problem."
Guevara agreed the common thread in those markets is a lack of planning, and they have largely done municipal planning separate from tourism.
"If you don't plan for the travelers, if you don't plan for the water, electricity, waste, all these things, then suddenly you have the [high] number of travelers, it will have an impact," she said. "If you don't plan for when the cruises are going to come, or you have someone approving all of them to come the same time today, then it's complicated."
She pointed to New York City as an example of a large, global tourism market that largely handles these issues through collective planning without major overcrowding issues, outside of the primary tourism district in Times Square.
Guevara said it's incumbent on both sides — the public and private sectors — to recognize the value and importance both bring to the table in establishing partnerships and plans.
"It's very clear to me that the private sector is the one that invests, that creates jobs and is the one that needs prosperity," she said. "Without that private sector, the government has no value."