Greenwashing in tourism in 2024

Introduction

As CEO of Responsible Travel, I have witnessed a lot of change in the 23 years I have been in tourism.

While most change has been largely positive, some has been performative – carbon offsetting being the most obvious example. Tourism ‘greenwashing’, where companies publicise their seemingly green policies as a means of appealing to customers, has reached epic proportions.

For customers looking to do the right thing, or the best that they can, this muddies the waters and causes significant problems. From my perspective, it’s not unexpected and I believe that in some ways it’s a sign of progress. Most greenwashing is inadvertent and occurs because businesses lack information and guidance. However, greenwashing in the truest sense of its definition describes the wilful attempt by corporations to distract and obscure the public from practices that they may not necessarily approve of – or simply to improve their image with minimal effort. This is a much more serious issue, and travel and tourism’s carbon emissions will rapidly increase until these issues are exposed.

If you work in tourism and are unsure whether to make claims that you are carbon neutral, sustainable, nature positive, environmentally friendly or more, then I will try to help.

Here, I go over the reasons for greenwashing, why it can be a problem, and how to avoid it, while encouraging you to have the confidence to shout about the positive work you and your company might be doing. Read on for more information.

Why is greenwashing in tourism peaking?

For over 30 years, the movement to improve the benefits of tourism to local people, nature and culture had mostly been driven by a limited number of visionary industry leaders, some enlightened destination managers, investors who understand the commercial risks attached to irresponsible actions, and – more recently – activist residents complaining about overtourism.

However, the game has now changed as more customers link responsible travel with richer experiences, a warmer welcome and the satisfaction of supporting some of the world’s most beautiful and fragile places – and there is money in it.

This has supercharged interest in “responsible tourism” (and other descriptions) and has led to overclaims and greenwashing by marketing and PR departments.

Carbon emissions greenwashing

The single most important thing to remember is that we need to keep carbon in the ground. Many in tourism continue to deploy a dazzling array of marketing tactics to distract from this.

The press and social media are filled with these gimmicks, with very little attention given to the issues that need to be addressed to decarbonise travel and tourism.

Airlines have traditionally been the biggest culprit here, seeking to appease customers’ concerns and the resulting guilt around air travel with offsetting schemes. But voluntary carbon offsetting schemes do not work, and claims to the contrary are deeply misleading for the public.

Regulators are cracking down on carbon neutral and net zero claims

Regulators in the US, EU and UK are cracking down on carbon neutral and net zero advertising and marketing claims.

The advice from the advertising regulator in the UK is to avoid using unqualified phrases, including “carbon neutral”, “net zero” or similar claims. Efforts by airlines to qualify these claims have so far failed.

Voluntary carbon credits, which are purchased by many in our sector to enable them to make carbon neutral claims, are bought by corporations as a smokescreen for further emissions. They can go on emitting carbon without any requirement to make reductions, making an overall carbon reduction claim impossible.

The Science Based Target initiative (SBTi) argues that science-based targets are the best methodology for corporations to set pathways to net zero. However, they allow them to set net zero goals based on reducing emissions per vacation (relative emissions) and not in total (absolute emissions). It is unlikely that this will satisfy an advertising regulator.

The Advertising Standards Authority in the UK provides useful general guidance: “Ads which refer to a business’s lower-carbon activities without including information about its overall harmful environmental impact may provide a misleading impression of the proportion of the business’s overall activities that are lower in carbon.”

Don’t overclaim about carbon labels

Carbon labels are a fantastic tool that enables businesses to communicate the carbon emissions of each vacation to customers.

Responsible Travel has labelled over 800 trips as part of our move towards cutting carbon. However, tourism businesses should be cautious about making any claims around carbon labels that put too much of the responsibility back on to the customer. The real work remains in the hands of the business itself and lies in reducing the emissions of each trip, so that future labels show lower emissions.

Avoid absolute sustainability claims

There is one main reason why we called our business ‘responsible’ rather than ‘sustainable’.

Among them is that while we can endeavour to lessen the impacts of vacations – to make them ‘more sustainable’ – they can’t be truly sustainable when they involve flying. Regulators set a very high bar for sustainability claims that I don’t believe our sector will be able to fully meet.

Taking responsibility for our impacts, and seeking to address them, are the first steps on a long journey towards becoming more sustainable.

Get real about sustainable aviation fuel

As an industry we need to stop waiting for the magic bullet. Sustainable aviation fuel is a hydrocarbon, just like kerosene, and it emits the same amount of carbon as kerosene when burned. Sustainable aviation fuel claims to reduce carbon when compared to kerosene because it’s produced from waste (plants and animals fats) that has absorbed carbon.

Whether you think burning waste and creating markets for it – rather than reducing fuel consumption – is a good idea, sustainable aviation fuel accounts for just 0.01% of aviation fuel globally and isn’t going to have a significant impact. New types of synthetic aviation fuel are in development, but the current governance and regulation of the aviation sector prevents the investment necessary for its successful expansion.

The real issues

The real issues are hidden beneath the greenwashing blizzard. Until they are addressed, travel and tourism’s carbon emissions will go on growing.

Nobody is regulating travel and tourism’s carbon emissions

• Aviation was not included in the Paris agreement.
• Despite promises, it is not included in the UK’s (or many other countries’) carbon budget.
• ‘Leadership’ is provided by the ICAO – the International Civil Aviation Organisation. Its carbon offsetting scheme has been criticised for not reducing emissions.

Aviation fuel is artificially cheap and killing decarbonisation

Aviation fuel is one of the few untaxed fuels in the world. This has several serious consequences for the future:

• The very low cost of air travel compared to rail travel makes it almost impossible to persuade customers to switch to lower-carbon rail travel.
• The lack of commercial viability for rail restricts the development of connecting rail networks and rail operators.
• Vital income from taxation that could be used to invest the decarbonisation of aviation is lost. All the new technologies are underfunded as a result of a tax break given to fossil fuels.

So what needs to be done?

As an industry we need to focus more on the hard work of reducing the carbon that we can than on marketing gimmicks to present ourselves as sustainable or carbon neutral.

This could include selecting accommodation that uses renewable energy, choosing public transport, direct flights, rail, plant-based diets, low-carbon building materials and reducing food waste. The things to do are well-known.

It also means encouraging customers to fly less by taking fewer and longer trips. At present, I think Responsible Travel is unique in its willingness to acknowledge this.

The only way for any of us offering international travel can make meaningful reductions is if we do something truly radical: come together as an industry to lobby governments to

• change how aviation’s emissions are regulated and by whom
• change aviation’s tax structures to raise billions to decarbonise aviation faster and level the playing field – and pricing – with rail.

This would change how we travel and provide the commercial rationale for improving the rail network and also encourage entrepreneurs to work on decarbonisation.

And shout about your positive impact!

It’s hugely positive that greenwashing is now being recognised and addressed by the European Parliament and global advertising standards agencies, among other regulatory organisations.

Vacations are a big investment and travelers are looking for guidance to make the best-informed decision that they can. Greenwashing’s false promises and smoke and mirrors make that decision far harder than it needs to be and erodes consumer confidence in the travel industry as a whole.

But greenwashing is not the same as sharing your success. If your vacations have a good impact on the communities and natural world around them, then you should feel confident telling potential customers about it. I hope that the guidelines and background provided here give you the tools needed.