Is consumer demand the only hope for sustainable tourism?

TravelMole Fast Conference special: Tour operators selling mass market holidays will only adopt practices that are sustainable if the demand comes from consumers, say industry experts.

This proposal came from a number of delegates and panel members at this week’s TravelMole Fast Conference. The argument was proposed that the uptake of sustainable tourism principles by the industry would rely on support and pressure from the tourists themselves.

ETOA executive director Tom Jenkins was sceptical as to whether operators would actually be able to reduce the negative effects of tourism on a destination without specific demand from holidaymakers. “The client drives the product and if people want an environmentally-sound holiday, operators will respond. But this topic has been flavour of the month for over 12 years and it still hasn’t become a mass movement. If you want to change things, change the consumer”, he said.

Mr Jenkins said he thought people did not generally “behave better” on holiday. “Going on holiday is not a virtuous pursuit,” he said.

“People aren’t ever going to go into a travel agent and ask for a responsible holiday,” said Responsibletravel.com co-founder Justin Francis. He added: “But what they are increasingly asking for is a local guide or to eat in a local restaurant, which is more sustainable.”

He said his company was “marketing sustainability by stealth” to encourage consumers to embrace local cultures without necessarily realising they are travelling more responsibly.

In the audience was Roy Dey-Graff of Gullivers Travel Associates, who said that consumers were consistently demanding the same things – quality at a good price. It is just a question of whether you can make consumers understand that the quality of the holiday is intrinsically related to the sustainability of that holiday. He said: “It is down to the education of people to show them what tourism does to a destination.”

Mr Francis said it wasn’t just down to consumer demand. He said that pressure from investors would drive change because investors were increasingly looking to support companies that can prove they are socially and environmentally responsible.

Federation of Tour Operators responsible tourism co-ordinator Chris Thompson agreed. He said: “Companies are beginning to see that there may be an advantage of taking sustainability on board. Some operators see the commercial driver from it by using sustainability as a spring board to differentiate their product.”

In the case of smaller operators dealing outside the mass market, consumers are not driving change, said Noel Josephides, managing director of Sunvil Holidays. He said: “It certainly doesn’t come from the clients. What forces us to do things differently is the number of destinations we have had to leave because our market refuses to travel to them any more.”

Echoing the earlier sentiments of Mr Francis he added: “People’s motives for travel are not environmental, but what they would like to do on holiday can be.”

The challenge is how to get the message to holidaymakers. Travel Foundation director Sue Hurdle said her organisation was looking to educate tourists both at the point of sale through agents and direct sellers as well as at the destination, where they could see evidence of sustainable tourism projects in practice.

Mr Francis said that his company offers consumers details on its website of how each holiday benefits the destination. He said he would like to see this one day from all tour operators.

Also on the panel was Natarajan Ishwaran, chief of the Natural Heritage Section, UNESCO. He said that initiatives that showed tourists how their contribution could make a difference were the most successful. He cited the example of collecting foreign currency, and giving consumers specific examples of projects funded by the collection.

During the debate Mr Thompson announced that FTO members had made a big step towards embracing sustainable tourism.

He said FTO members have signed up to a document committing them to sustainable tourism practices. Mr Francis said he applauded the move and hoped to reconvene in two years or so to establish whether the FTO members have reached the benchmarks they have committed to.

But Mr Jenkins was sceptical and mentioned a similar undertaking by ETOA years ago. He said: “The reason for undertaking a sustainability report was because it was the flavour of the month in 1992.” He said that he felt environmental charters were rarely followed through in practice.