Travel and tourism is the world’s largest industry, fuelling growth and employment to the extent that it has become a critical component of the world economy. Tourism is also a growing industry: in 1995, there were 565 million international tourist arrivals, and this number is predicted to grow to over 1 billion by 2010 and 1.6 billion by 2020 (UNWTO World Tourism Barometer).
Our challenge
Our industry’s activities account (directly or indirectly) for 11% of the world's GDP and 12% of its exports (ref 1). Around 50 of the world’s least developed countries rely largely on this activity for economic development and recent studies suggest that in these locations a significant proportion of tourist spending reaches the poor (ref 2). In these countries in particular, our industry has the potential to make a considerable contribution to raising living standards and alleviating poverty.
The UN World Tourism Organization estimates that travel and tourism emits around 5% of global carbon emissions of which 2% are from aviation and the remainder are mostly from accommodation and other transport (ref 3). We know we need to play our part in reducing our carbon emissions, limiting the amount of water we use (directly or indirectly) and to protect biodiversity as this forms an integral part of our product which our customers experience when on holiday.
Therein lies the challenge for TUI Travel – to understand how we can balance the impact of our activities to arrive at the optimum social, economic and environmental benefits for all concerned. Our goal in this respect is to make travel experiences special by providing holidays that cause minimal environmental impact, respect the culture and people of destinations and offer real economic benefit to local communities.
We appreciate the journey towards this goal will be a long one, but we aspire to lead the travel and tourism industry throughout it. The table below shows the main ways we can use TUI Travel’s influence to do this.
| Opportunity | Our goal |
| Embedding into our core business | Ensure our business decisions take into account sustainable development principles |
| Operational impacts | Minimise the negative sustainability impacts (particularly on climate change) of our day-to-day operations |
| Supply chain management | Support our supply chain in managing their sustainability impacts |
| Choice editing | ‘Edit out’ the holiday options that do not meet our minimum sustainability standards |
| Choice influencing | Make it easy for customers to choose a more sustainable holiday |
| Awareness raising | Help customers appreciate the sustainability impacts of tourism, driving demand for more sustainable holidays |
| Changing behaviour | Encourage customers to change their actions in a way that maximises the positive and minimises the negative impacts of their holiday |
| Innovation and product development | Develop new, more sustainable experiences in response to demand |
| Collaborating with our industry | Share best practice with others in the tourism industry where our competitiveness is not affected |
| Advocacy | Use our influence responsibly and in line with our commitment to sustainable development |
| Putting something back | Put something back into the environment or community wherever we cannot avoid a negative impact |
Read more ...
(ref 1) United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) Tourism Satellite Accounts (TSA)
(ref 2) Can tourism offer pro-poor pathways to prosperity? Overseas Development Institute Briefing Paper, June 2007
(ref 3) United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and World Meteorological Organization (WMO) (October 2007) Climate Change and Tourism: Responding to Global Challenges
View All Downloads