Creating a sustainable travel industry, post-Covid

As the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic sent the world into lock­down and put the brakes on trav­el, the envi­ron­men­tal side effects were unde­ni­ably ben­e­fi­cial. Air pol­lu­tion in cities fell dra­mat­i­cal­ly, for instance, while fish could be seen in Venice’s canals again. And, with tourism account­ing for at least 5% of the world’s green­house gas emis­sions in 2019, accord­ing to the UN World Tourism Orga­ni­za­tion, it is clear that cer­tain forms of trans­port are incom­pat­i­ble with the sus­tain­abil­i­ty agen­da. But bor­ders are reopen­ing and inter­na­tion­al trav­el is resum­ing, so what’s to be done?

Capitalising on increased consumer consciousness

Even before Covid halt­ed long-haul trav­el, con­sumer inter­est in sus­tain­abil­i­ty was increas­ing. TUI Group report­ed an 84% increase in the num­ber of its clients choos­ing “green­er and fair­er” hol­i­day pack­ages between 2015 and 2020, for instance.

Observ­ing this trend, Cat Jones found­ed no-fly trav­el com­pa­ny Byway in March 2020. “Even before the pan­dem­ic, there was a surge in con­sumer con­scious­ness and the num­ber of busi­ness­es being built on sus­tain­abil­i­ty,” she says. “With the first lock­down com­ing, I knew that if there was ever a time to give peo­ple a trav­el expe­ri­ence ground­ed in the fact that they aren’t fly­ing, this was it.”

Japan is one of many mar­kets where the eco-trav­el sec­tor has yet to make much head­way, but younger con­sumers are becom­ing increas­ing­ly con­cerned about sus­tain­abil­i­ty issues, reports Ken­ji Itaku­ra, deputy sales direc­tor at the Tokyu Hotels Group. With an eye on attract­ing mil­len­ni­al trav­ellers in par­tic­u­lar, his com­pa­ny is imple­ment­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty prac­tices through­out its prop­er­ty port­fo­lio and adopt­ing new tech­nolo­gies.

Destinations leading the way

The Kawasa­ki King Skyfront Tokyu Rei Hotel is the world’s first ‘hydro­gen hotel’, for instance, gen­er­at­ing all of its ener­gy from waste plas­tic and food. Itaku­ra notes that it was devel­oped as part of a project start­ed by the Min­istry of the Envi­ron­ment in 2015 “to com­bat pol­lu­tion and make effec­tive use of hydro­gen ener­gy”.

This kind of pub­lic-sec­tor back­ing is vital for con­tin­ued inno­va­tion in trav­el. As Byway builds the com­plex dynam­ic pack­ag­ing tech­nol­o­gy that will under­pin its prod­uct, it has been sup­port­ed by a £100,000 Inno­vate UK grant, which Jones describes as “excep­tion­al­ly use­ful”.

Alexan­dra Pas­toll­nigg is the founder of Fair Voy­age, an online trav­el agency spe­cial­is­ing in social­ly and envi­ron­men­tal­ly respon­si­ble trips to low­er-income coun­tries. She believes that Covid has offered the indus­try “a once-in-a-gen­er­a­tion oppor­tu­ni­ty to do things dif­fer­ent­ly”, but gov­ern­ments must first lead the way with sus­tain­able devel­op­ment plans and invest­ments.

Trav­el was already a low-mar­gin, high-com­pe­ti­tion indus­try before the arrival of Covid-19. The pan­dem­ic has cre­at­ed fur­ther pres­sure, with con­sumers expect­ing low prices and free can­cel­la­tions to tempt them back. 

“Local trav­el agen­cies, tour oper­a­tors and trav­el busi­ness­es haven’t had cus­tomers for a long time and are strug­gling to sur­vive,” Pas­toll­nigg says. “The harsh eco­nom­ic real­i­ty is that few con­sumers can afford to pay a sus­tain­abil­i­ty pre­mi­um.”

Hence the need for gov­ern­ment incen­tives. In the UAE, the Ras Al Khaimah Tourism Devel­op­ment Author­i­ty pro­vides a case in point. The author­i­ty, estab­lished by the gov­ern­ment of Ras Al Khaimah in 2011, has used the pause in inter­na­tion­al trav­el to strength­en the emirate’s sus­tain­abil­i­ty focus.

Mar­ket­ing itself as ‘the nature emi­rate”, Ras Al Khaimah has decid­ed to tar­get social­ly and envi­ron­men­tal­ly aware trav­ellers and is invest­ing in devel­op­ments aligned with that goal. The May 2021 announce­ment of £96m in fund­ing for the sec­tor shows that the emi­rate is tru­ly “seri­ous about invest­ing in sus­tain­able tourism”, accord­ing to the authority’s CEO, Raki Phillips.

Technological innovation in the luxury travel market

At the lux­u­ry end of the mar­ket, there is more finan­cial free­dom to inno­vate. For instance, New York firm Yuji Yamaza­ki Archi­tec­ture designed Kudadoo, a ful­ly solar-pow­ered pri­vate island in the Mal­dives, in 2018.

“This was a big design state­ment and a big invest­ment at the time,” says the practice’s prin­ci­pal archi­tect, Yuji Yamaza­ki. “But, as the price of solar pan­els goes down, I hope that going ful­ly solar will become a more viable option for many small­er projects, par­tic­u­lar­ly in equa­to­r­i­al coun­tries.”

Although Kudadoo remains large­ly “sym­bol­ic” for now, accord­ing to Yamaza­ki, its renew­able ener­gy gen­er­a­tion sys­tem may be adopt­ed more wide­ly in the Mal­dives over the longer term. The low-lying arch­i­pel­ago is extreme­ly vul­ner­a­ble to ris­ing sea lev­els and its tourism indus­try is far from sus­tain­able. In 2019, the sec­tor account­ed for 40% of the nation’s total CO₂ emis­sions, more than three-quar­ters of which result­ed from elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion.

Covid’s negative sustainability impacts

Accord­ing to the World Bank, tourism direct­ly accounts for about 25% of the Mal­dives’ econ­o­my, which con­tract­ed by an esti­mat­ed 28% in 2020. In many ter­ri­to­ries that depend this heav­i­ly on income from hol­i­day­mak­ers, Covid has not offered a gold­en oppor­tu­ni­ty for ecosys­tems to recov­er. Rather, local pop­u­la­tions have suf­fered, while tourism-reliant con­ser­va­tion pro­grammes have foundered.

Paul Gar­diner is CEO of the Man­tis Col­lec­tion, a com­pa­ny that owns ‘eco-lodges’ and hotels on every con­ti­nent. Although the firm is invest­ing in excit­ing projects at its eco-lodge inno­va­tion hub in the South African province of East­ern Cape, he reports that the focus has been on dam­age lim­i­ta­tion.

In 2018, Man­tis and French hotel giant Accor entered a part­ner­ship to estab­lish a not-for-prof­it enter­prise called the Com­mu­ni­ty Con­ser­va­tion Fund Africa (CCFA) in their bid to tack­le the continent’s social and eco­log­i­cal prob­lems. Through­out the Covid pan­dem­ic, the CCFA has dis­trib­uted thou­sands of food parcels to com­mu­ni­ties affect­ed by the sharp drop in tourism income. The aim, Gar­diner says, has been “to help them through this awful peri­od and also to pre­vent them from hav­ing to poach wildlife in order to sus­tain them­selves”.

Along­side this, Man­tis has con­tin­ued invest­ing in inno­v­a­tive busi­ness mod­els and ini­tia­tives, includ­ing the ‘Adopt a Bee­hive’ cam­paign, in which “the CCFA donates hives to local com­mu­ni­ties, trains peo­ple in bee­keep­ing and then pur­chas­es the hon­ey to use at Man­tis prop­er­ties”.

The complex path to industry-wide change

“I feel many peo­ple are expect­ing a com­pa­ny to pro­duce some sort of tech­no­log­i­cal sil­ver bul­let that will enable us to take 20 long-haul flights a year with no envi­ron­men­tal impact. That won’t hap­pen in our life­times,” pre­dicts Simon Will­more, chair­man of the British Guild of Trav­el Writ­ers and dig­i­tal man­ag­er at Bradt Trav­el Guides.

Instead, there will be more “intan­gi­ble” inno­va­tions, includ­ing so-called dig­i­tal nomad visas. Juris­dic­tions rang­ing from Croa­t­ia to Bermu­da have estab­lished them to “allow peo­ple to vis­it new places, but with a ‘trav­el less, stay longer’ mantra”, he says.

It’s clear that the path towards sus­tain­abil­i­ty in the trav­el indus­try is not straight­for­ward, but inno­va­tors are help­ing to chart a course. And they’re respond­ing to a clear pub­lic inter­est in sus­tain­able tourism. But the real ques­tion is: will trav­el-starved con­sumers be pre­pared, once the Covid restric­tions are final­ly lift­ed, to put their mon­ey where their mouth is?