Study of TUI customers in Cyprus shows wider impact of tourism

Thursday, 24 Jul, 2015 0

A study on the impact of 60,000 TUI customers on holiday in eight Cyprus hotels has shown the importance of looking at the ‘bigger picture’.

The 2013 pilot study, by TUI Group, PwC and the Travel Foundation, looked at the economic, social, environmental, and tax impact of the holidaymakers.

The results, which have now been published, show a significant amount of the total impact of tourism comes ‘indirectly’ from supply chain activities and tourism spend.

Supply chains and other services used by customers, for example, were found to generate almost 14 times as much waste as the hotels themselves – 1.8kg of rubbish per customer per night from hotels compared with 25kg from the supply chain.

Greenhouse gases were found to be the most significant environmental cost, representing less than 0.01% of total GHG emissions in Cyprus.

But their impact more than doubles if flights to and from Cyprus are included.

The study also found that tourism taxes are a ‘very significant’ benefit for Cyprus, equivalent to €25 per customer per night.

Airport departure tax accounted for just 10% of this amount, which includes other taxes such as corporation tax, VAT and income tax.

The study concluded that the economic and tax benefits of tourism are by far the greatest impact, amounting to €84 per guest per night.

This amount far exceeds the negative environmental (-€4) and social (-€0.2) costs.

But TUI pointed out that this one-year snapshot does not take account of the construction of the hotels, or the environmental and social impacts which will accumulate over a longer time frame.

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Bev

Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.

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