I used to think that flight deck visists were a great
PR tool. Many passengers that visited my flight deck commented that it was the highlight of their trip, for some even the highpoint of a holiday. Flight Deck visits enabled me to answer many questions that the travelling public have and explain briefly what we actually do. The amount of people that have asked,"so can you land the aroplane manually if the autopilot fails?" were often surprised to discover that we do a lot of manual flying.
For many pilots of my generation we are pilots because we were facinated by flying. Many newer pilots in my company see flying as a career, with the thought of doing it for a while then moving on to another career or as a fast track into the managment scene.
With less airshows, more general air travelling, no flight deck visits, other fashionable careers such as IT, media, etc I do not know how youngsters of the future will be attracted. However I remember that 35000 people applied for 200 sponsorship places when I applied, I am sure that their will always be applicants though maybe not inthe same numbers.