ABSTRACT
Tourism is much older than air transport. Travel was already a widespread phenomenon during Roman times (Perrottet 2002), when fl ying was just a myth. Modern tourism started in the nineteenth century due to the invention of rail transport (Prideaux 2001). Air transport emerged in the 1920s, but initially was only for the elite until the introduction of jet aircraft and cheap fl ight in the 1960s (Prideaux 2001). Tourism often is strongly associated with air transport as if it is the most used transport mode. From statistics this appears not to be the case. Of all 4.8 billion (domestic and international) tourism trips in 2005 just 18% were by air, 43% were by car and the remainder by train, coach or ship (UNWTO-UNEP-WMO 2008). Though the use of air transport is increasing faster than other transport modes, it is envisaged that, even in 2035, the car will still be the most important (UNWTO-UNEP-WMO 2008). Air transport’s share in total distance travelled in tourism was 44% and may rise to 68% by 2035 (based on UNWTO-UNEP-WMO 2008). The average distance of tourism trips has increased from about 200 km return in 1900 to almost 1,800 km return in 2005; this is still exponentially rising by about 2.2% per year (Peeters 2013).
