Online retail giant Amazon has developed its travel service called Amazon Destinations. This is set to fuel further tourism jobs. The service will cover hotels, travel, restaurants and entertainment offerings across New York, Los Angeles and its home base of Seattle. This service pits Amazon as part of its corporate strategy head on against the likes of Expedia and TripAdvisor. This follows the launch of Amazon Home Services some time back and thus shows the diverse set of industries the firm is targeting.

Uber has so much revolutionized the business world with its innovative model, that several other industries are also trying to copy their corporate strategy. Flycleaners and Washio are two of the laundry firms which have developed a similar crowd sourcing model for their business. Then there is shipping that has developed the concierge system with Shyp being a similar successful app. Even valet services have developed a GPS based system where the available service providers can enlist for the product and serve customers in requirement of the same. Luxe has been one such implementing firm. Crucially, the health industry has also started crowd sourcing doctors and medical professionals using app called Heal. Meal preparation services have also adopted this model where home cooks can be assigned to help those who require service at home. Even supplies are shipped to doorstep for those who sign up. 

The number of tourists traveling worldwide is set to increase from one billion today to around double that figure over the next fifteen odd years fueling a major spurt in generation of tourism jobs. Around 5% of global exports and nearly ten percent of worldwide GDP is generated from tourism. However, this is creating negative environmental impacts for the planet. Especially disturbing is that means of tourist travel have not changed much and air travel remains a major source of pollution. Governments need to step up efforts to curb this but unfortunately not much is being done. A UN summit next year in Paris seeks to address this issue and finalize a sustainable tourism benchmark. 

In the present circumstances, more i-phones are sold per day than babies born and about half the world’s population can be categorized as internet users. Similar is the staggering impact at Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Life expectancy has doubled in the USA and human occupation trends have seen a reversal from the farm to the factory and from there to office. During times of such disruption, individual merit makes or breaks people. As per market research conducted by Pew, the middle class is seeing median income decreasing while great a number of jobs are being lost to machines. This kind of risk entails opportunities as well. Thus not only smartness or strength but the ability to be agile and to adopt will set our generation and the next on path towards survival and success. 

A number of changes in politics and economics are underway due to the transformation that digital marketing has had on the populace. The working classes have seen jobs outsourced to low wage economies and the middle classes are seeing no real increase in wages. Thus democracy is in crisis in the digital economy. Now it is technology driven, startup oriented economy originating from Silicon Valley rather than Wall Street which is coming to the forefront. Social norms and statuses are shifting so quickly that established middle classes are feeling challenged. With the third Industrial revolution impending, the social democracy as we know is struggling for identity. Even labour movement has lost its vitality. Digital transformation will alter not only economics but politics as well.

Eight Community Based Tourism Enterprises (CBTEs) in Jamaica are being helped in terms of management training by Social Investment Fund in the country to help prepare for the travel trade. The participants includes newcomers Rastafari Indigenous Village which very recently got its license issued. Purpose of this training is to enable CBTEs professionalize and thus will receive tools to analyze and determine cost plus price of product to be offered. A similar initiative worked excellently in March this year creating numerous travel jobs.

The UK is catering to Chinese tourists in an innovative manner and wishes to further expand the same. Chinese people have become more digitally savvy and thus technologies are catering to attracting them in large numbers using digital platforms. They also spend a lot on fashion retail. In fact visa regulations have been eased and now it is much easier for Chinese tourists to get UK visa than European one. This trend is creating innovative tourism jobs in both the UK and China.