According to the World Travel Market, responsible tourism is about “making better places for people to live in and better places for people to visit.” It’s taken from the Cape Town declaration which says that responsible tourism:

minimises negative economic, environmental and social impacts;
generates greater economic benefits for local people and enhances the well-being of host communities, improves working conditions and access to the industry;
involves local people in decisions that affect their lives and life changes;
makes positive contributions to the conservation of natural and cultural heritage, to the maintenance of the world’s diversity;
provides more enjoyable experiences for tourists through more meaningful connections with local people, and a greater understanding of local cultural, social and environmental issues;
provide access for people with disabilities and the disadvantaged;
is culturally sensitive, engenders respect between tourists and hosts, and builds local pride and confidence.

The trouble is, a lot of tourism isn’t that responsible and in some cases, its impact is actually worsening. Let’s look at the key areas to be more aware of and our suggestions for what travel businesses can do to have a more positive impact.

The top 3 issues

Three areas where tourism can dramatically improve its impact are by preventing overtourism, growing local economic benefit (nutrition) and reducing the emissions from tourism.

1. Overtourism

Overtourism is a hot topic right now. More people are travelling and too many of them are visiting the same places. Some 80% of travellers visit just 10% of the world's destinations, National Geographic notes. This leads to negative consequences such as property prices rocketing which pushes locals out of the market, overcrowding of people and vehicles, degradation of fragile landmarks and ecosystems and a draw on resources that stretches local availability (Dubrovnik 2024: 27 visitors per resident!)

This has led to local people taking action, both officially, with the introduction of limits on visitor numbers and higher tourist taxes, and unofficially by targeting tourists with water guns (Barcelona 2024) or spraying “Tourists go home” graffiti which can be found in cultural cities across Europe.

How to avoid contributing to overtourism

An obvious action for holiday companies is to offer a broader choice of destinations, perhaps even removing very over-touristed destinations from their portfolio.

Promoting shoulder seasons is another strategy. That’s those seasons that come before and after peak seasons. This encourages people to travel outside of the busiest times to relieve the burden on a destination.

2. A lack of economic nutrition for destinations

Tourism isn’t just making life harder for local residents in a practical sense, it’s not benefiting them economically either. To bring it home, according to the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), for every $100 USD spent on a vacation by a tourist, only around $5 actually stays in the local economy. It’s also called economic leakage. It’s money that escapes the local economy. When holiday-makers book with holiday companies, it’s these companies themselves that absorb a large proportion of their spend, meaning that holiday-makers spend less with local businesses in the destinations they visit.

Take a look at this table:

The (estimated) economic benefit of a variety of trips that stays in local economies.

Economic benefit to local communities varies wildly from 5% to 75%. Combining these ten trips, an estimated 38.5% of the cost of the trips benefits destination economies.

How to boost the economic benefit for destinations

Arguably, the redistribution of wealth from the richest countries to the poorest is the biggest superpower travel and tourism has. If we are honest, when it comes to tourism benefiting conservation, local heritage sites and people, it is through the money spent by holiday-makers (that all important economic nutrition).

The key here is for tour operators not to use international hotel chains and other international businesses who channel the majority of revenue back to HQ.

Travel companies also have a role to play in calculating and highlighting how much of their revenue stays locally. See Fogo Island Hotel, showing 65% of their money stays local. Or Tripseed showing 27.9% of your day tour fees stay in the village you visit.

Getting these numbers up is how tourism can become a powerhouse for positive wealth distribution to some of the most amazing places in the world.

3. Emissions from tourism

With the number of people who can afford to travel growing, tourism-related emissions are on the rise and are expected to grow by 25% by 2030. This, in an era, where we know we should be reducing our emissions.

So how do we increase economic impact whilst reducing emissions?

We took our table above a step further by adding the estimated emissions of each trip type. With this we were able to calculate the amount of greenhouse gases emitted per dollar of benefit to the local economy. Results varied significantly and showed that how people travel to a destination makes a big difference. Ocean cruising provides very little economic benefit to destinations whilst contributing huge amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

Whatever your score, good or bad, the aim is to improve it so trips have a smaller footprint whilst increasing the financial benefit to the destination. And it doesn't just mean spend more (which obviously helps) it means spend better.

*Take the above numbers with a pinch of salt, as some spend based data was taken from ChatGPT.

How tour operators can reduce tourism-related emissions

When it comes to travel, prioritising cleaner forms of transport is the top priority. Some holiday companies are already proposing train and coach travel to destinations and transfers by electric vehicle or public transport. If flights are unavoidable, it is possible to reduce emissions by choosing the lowest carbon carrier.

Any accommodation that is booked on behalf of the customer should be run on renewable energy as a minimum and ideally have a Net Zero plan in place.

Meal-wise, companies should be looking to limit beef, lamb and dairy options, opting for lower carbon alternatives like chicken, fish and plant-based dishes.

Activities is another area holiday companies can address to keep the carbon footprint of a holiday to a minimum. Wind-based water sports rather than motor-powered ones can be just as exhilarating and create a fraction of the emissions.

Find more ideas in this article: 8 Decarbonisation Tips for Tour Operators.

Psst… don’t forget, as a tourist, you can always apply these tips too.

Need a helping hand?

Measuring emissions and economic leakage goes hand in hand because every supplier has a carbon footprint and may or may not benefit a local community. If you are looking to measure your company’s carbon footprint and address the economic leakage associated with the trips you run, get in touch.

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How to be a Responsible Tourism Business