Rohit Talwar on how to lead with foresight in travel

“It becomes convenient to forget past pain.”

Those words from global futurist Rohit Talwar are not just a statement of his opinion, they are at the crux of his message to leaders in travel and tourism – a message that is equal parts admonition and inspiration.

As founder and CEO of Fast Future, a research and consulting business based in London, Talwar helps corporate leaders envision and shape their companies’ futures.

His strategy is based on helping businesses future proof themselves by developing foresight – a process he equates to building a muscle that must be strengthened over time.

Talwar says developing this “capacity to explore the future, think the unthinkable and making it part of everyone’s responsibility to be part of the organization’s radar for change and innovation” enables a company to be better prepared for the uncertainties that will, inevitably, arise.

For travel and tourism, there’s no better case study than the crisis and chaos of the COVID pandemic. But Talwar is concerned some industry leaders may not be using those lessons today to prepare for tomorrow.

“The focus for a lot of people in the industry right now, rightfully, is on trying to secure business growth in the near term and deal with current uncertainties,” he says.

“And there are the exciting World Travel and Tourism Council forecasts that suggest the industry will return to growing at a higher rate than global GDP, so there is a sense that we don’t have to worry. But there is another view, which is that we’ve probably never experienced the situation that we have now, where we have a polycrisis of large, compounding and accelerating risks coming together in an unprecedented manner.”

Talwar defines some of those risks as global economic volatility, persistent inflation, climate change, rising energy costs and the “savage employment impacts” of the automation of work.

However, says Talwar, there is also a “massive opportunity” to face these risks head on, embrace radical new ideas and secure the future.

On November 15 at The Phocuswright Conference in Phoenix, he will share concrete ideas of how travel companies can minimize the effects of future chaos by cultivating forward-focused, creative thinking about developing new sources of revenue, adopting new ways to reach customers and developing new skills and behaviors.

And Talwar argues, this forward-thinking approach must be accompanied by a truly open mindset.

“We all say we’re open to innovation,” he says.

“But many organizations have horrible body language. They have horrible body language internally to their own people around radical ideas and new propositions and even more horrible body language toward ideas and innovations in the outside world.”

And changing that thinking is now an urgent need.

Says Talwar, “Securing the future is no longer something we can put off until the day after tomorrow. It now needs as much leadership attention as generating today’s revenues.”