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Industry must not ignore sustainable and responsible tourism
Monday, 18 Aug, 2009
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TravelMole Guest Opinion by World Travel Market chairman Fiona Jeffery
Environmental issues have somewhat fallen off the media’s agenda as the US sub-prime mortgage problems evolved into a worldwide banking crisis and ultimately a recession.
It seems strange now to look back at the first nine months of 2007 when the travel industry was being attacked as a chief cause of climate change (despite only accounting for an estimated 2% to 3% of the world’s carbon emissions).
In response, the world’s travel companies launched and promoted a range of initiatives to demonstrate their responsible tourism credentials and offset this negative publicity.
The news agenda may have moved on, for now, however it would be a mistake for the travel industry to ignore the importance of sustainable and responsible tourism.
Consumers will continue to demand – as the media will again – for the travel industry to display rock solid sustainability credentials.
At World Travel Market we have led the industry’s response to responsible tourism with the creation of WTM World Responsible Tourism Day (WRTD), which sees the worldwide industry unite behind an ethical agenda.
WTM’s World Responsible Tourism Day runs an incredibly successful sustainable tourism campaign, where travel companies can apply to use its logo to highlight their own initiatives as part of universal industry action.
So far this year we have been inundated with applications from the travel and tourism industry with around 150 being successful, so the logo will be very prominent at World Travel Market this year.
The response WRTD has received from the industry is phenomenal and demonstrates the power of responsible tourism, even in such a difficult global economic climate.
It’s great to see all parts of the industry getting behind the responsible and sustainable tourism agenda, from Europe’s largest tour operator TUI – which recently announced it has cut its carbon footprint by 8% in 2007/8 and plans to reduce it by a further 6% by 2013/14 – to smaller operators and hotel chains.
A survey of 900 responsibletravel.com’s suppliers revealed more than half (53%) have seen an increase in business since the start of the global recession.
Holidaymakers, despite of the recession, have shown the industry the way forward and now it’s the turn of the industry to provide a clear response.
Phil Davies
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