Tom Jenkins, CEO of ETOA, joins the Balancing Tourism podcast ahead of the Tourism Seasonality Summit in Rimini.
In 1991, a young Tom Jenkins travelled to Venice to raise the alarm. The previous year, the opening of Hungary’s borders had sent coachloads of first-time visitors pouring into the city, the causeway had been closed for the first time ever, and operators were scrambling. Jenkins, then running operations for American Express in London, went to the Venetians with a straightforward message: this is going to be a problem, and we should find a way to manage it now.
He was met, as he puts it, with blank incomprehension.
The city had just come through the first Gulf War, which had crushed demand. It had dealt with a green algae crisis that had driven visitors away. The idea of restricting numbers both deeply unpopular equally baffling. Why would you do that?
Thirty-five years on, Jenkins is CEO of ETOA, the European Tourism Association, representing over 1,200 operators and suppliers delivering more than 12 billion euros of business annually across Europe. And the industry is, finally, having the conversation he tried to start in Venice in 1991.
He joined Ged Brown on the Balancing Tourism podcast to talk about where that conversation has got to, and where it needs to go next.
The State of European Tourism: Honest About the Headwinds
Jenkins does not deal in false reassurance. Asked about the current state of European inbound tourism, he sets out the picture plainly.
The North American boom that drove strong numbers through 2022, 2023, 2024 and into 2025 has run out of steam. Economic uncertainty in the United States and a weakening dollar are the primary factors. The strength of the dollar, Jenkins notes, has always been the single biggest driver of American arrivals in Europe.
Asia presents a more complex picture. Japan, once the dominant Asian source market for Europe, no longer plays that role. China took over, but connectivity remains severely constrained. The ongoing land war in Europe means flag carriers cannot fly over Russia, which directly affects journey times and costs from key origin markets. The situation in the Gulf adds further pressure, closing off the hub connections through which secondary Indian cities in particular fed passengers into European destinations.
“We’ve got headwinds,” Jenkins says, with some understatement. He expects arrivals to be down on 2024, though not dramatically so, and stresses that the picture could shift quickly depending on how the Gulf situation develops. With 14 percent of all international air traffic transiting through Gulf hubs, and with fuel prices sensitive to any escalation, the variables are significant.
The headline, though, is that mass cancellations have not materialised. The industry is in limbo rather than in crisis. But limbo, as Jenkins acknowledges, is not a comfortable place from which to plan.
The Commercial Logic of Low Season
For those in the industry who still treat the low seasons as a worthy but marginal concern, Jenkins offers a reframe that is worth sitting with.
Tour operators, he argues, do not add much value in high season. When a destination is full, when hotels in London, Paris, Rome and Florence are selling out without any assistance, there is little a tour operator can bring to the table. The destination sells itself. Operators turning up in July or August to offer their services get, as Jenkins puts it, “looked at with a bit of scorn.”
The low seasons are different. When occupancy is down and demand needs stimulating, the relationships, the curation, the ability to package and promote a destination to origin markets that might not otherwise consider travelling at that time of year — that is where operators genuinely earn their place in the value chain. The commercial argument for engaging with off-peak is not just about doing the right thing. It is about being useful in a way that high season simply does not require.
This logic also applies to the access operators need from suppliers. Jenkins describes a long-established dynamic in which operators have used their ability to deliver low season business as leverage to secure access in high season. Fill us in March and we will give you rooms in August. The relationship has always worked this way. What is changing is that the emphasis is shifting, and the low season side of that equation is becoming more valuable in its own right.
The Demographic Shift That Changes the Equation
One of the more strategically significant points Jenkins raises concerns the demographic profile of long-haul visitors to Europe, and how it is changing.
Long-haul tourism to Europe is, he notes, overwhelmingly cultural in motivation. Visitors from North America, Japan, Korea, China and India are not coming for beach holidays or skiing. They are coming for cities, food, art, history and atmosphere. There is no intrinsic reason for any of that to happen in July or August. The seasonality pressure in this segment is driven by habit, school calendars and the gravitational pull of peak.
But the demographic is ageing. The core markets for European long-haul travel are increasingly populated by retired or semi-retired, relatively affluent travellers who are not constrained by school terms or bank holidays. They have flexibility. They have time. And in many cases, they have the means to travel well.
This group, Jenkins argues, is a natural audience for the shoulder and off-peak proposition. The experience argument — less crowding, more authentic engagement with the destination, closer proximity to the way locals actually live — resonates more strongly with culturally motivated, independent-minded travellers than it does with the mass market. The industry’s job is to convert that latent openness into actual bookings.
Why the Silos Have to Go
One of the more striking exchanges in the conversation concerns the relationship between aviation and the cruise sector. Brown describes a recent conversation with a network planner at a major European low-cost carrier, who told him the airline had no relationship whatsoever with the cruise industry — despite the fact that cruise lines are entirely dependent on airlift, and despite Royal Caribbean reporting that circa 80 percent of its European passengers arrive by low-cost carrier.
Jenkins is not surprised, but he is clear about what it illustrates. The intimacy that once existed between tour operators and airlines, built around ticketing overrides and commission structures, was dismantled when the economics of airline distribution changed. What replaced it was not a new collaborative model but effectively nothing. Operators, airlines, cruise lines and destinations have retreated into their own lanes.
The result is an industry that is structurally poor at coordinating around the kind of cross-sector problem that seasonality represents. No single stakeholder can solve it alone. The destinations cannot do it without the airlines. The airlines cannot justify shoulder routes without demand signals from the tourism sector. The cruise lines cannot plan itineraries without reliable airlift. Everyone is waiting for someone else to move first.
This is precisely what the Tourism Seasonality Summit in Rimini on 17 and 18 May is designed to address. Getting the airlines, airports, tourism authorities, DMOs and cruise lines into the same room, as Ged describes it, is not a nice-to-have. It is a prerequisite for making any real progress.
What Jenkins Wants from Rimini
Asked what he wants the industry to leave the Summit having decided rather than merely discussed, Jenkins is direct.
He wants attendees to leave genuinely convinced that low season is the growth area in European tourism. As a commercial reality more than just a sustainability talking point. The capacity for expansion exists there in a way that high season, increasingly constrained and increasingly contested, simply cannot match.
He also wants destinations to wake up to the opportunity. The low season experience, properly packaged and honestly communicated, is not a consolation prize. In many respects it is a better product. The challenge is not the product itself but the confidence to say so clearly, and the industry infrastructure to back it up.
Listen to the Full Episode
High Season Sells Itself, featuring Tom Jenkins, CEO of ETOA, is available now on the Balancing Tourism podcast.
ETOA’s SHOP 2026 shoulder and off-peak marketplace event takes place in London on 12 June 2026. Details at etoa.org.
The Tourism Seasonality Summit takes place 17–18 May 2026 at the Palacongressi, Rimini, co-located with Routes Europe. For further details visit seasonalitysummit.com and to register remaining delegate places, visit [https://www.routesonline.com/events/conference/95/summit-agenda/#mainContent]
