Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
accommodation, attractions and activities, restaurants, excursion providers, perhaps inclusive tour
providers (and other service providers that contribute to the total tourism experience such as car
hire, fi nancial services and so forth), as well as decisions about destination and mode of travel for
arrival and departure. To do so with any accuracy requires knowledge about the respective
corporate social responsibility, certifi cation schemes or equivalent programmes. There might
also be comparisons to be made between the respective environmental impacts, social impacts
and economic impacts. Is it better to fl y to a long haul ecotourism destination where you have
close economic and social contact with the host community, or is it better to take the train and
stay in locally owned accommodation within your own country (domestic tourism)? How does
the intended length of stay affect the consequences of the decision? Even with the inclination,
ability and access to all the required information for a responsible choice (a doubtful proposition)
and assuming a rational decision process (also a doubtful proposition), making a robust decision
for sustainability is a taxing task (Bowen and Clarke 2009). Even the 'most dedicated green
consumer' is likely to be 'confused and disempowered' by the complexity of information to be
considered (Sustainable Development Commission 2006: 15). To compound the problem, the
level of environmental literacy amongst most consumers is low (Peattie and Crane 2005) and has
been described as ill-informed and highly polarized (Gossling
et al
. 2012).
Secondly, the proliferation of ecolabels and tourism certifi cation schemes designed to guide
responsible tourism decisions aids and abets the confusion. Better established examples of these
schemes include Blue Flag (international; beaches and marinas), Green Globe (international),
Green Tourism Business Scheme (UK), Legambiente Tourismo (Italy), Certifi cation for
Sustainable Tourism (Costa Rica) and the Nature and Ecotourism Accreditation Program
(NEAP; Australia). However, poor consumer recognition of many ecolabels and tourism cer-
tifi cation schemes, in particular, what they stand for, and whether they are based on self-
certifi cation or independent verifi cation, suggests such schemes currently do not deliver strong
and unambiguous market value.
Thirdly, there is the prevailing and long standing sense of consumer cynicism and distrust of
green claims across all product categories (National Consumer Council 1996; Peattie and Crane
2005), from which tourism is not exempt. In the United Kingdom, around 90 per cent of
consumers distrust the green information communicated by businesses and government (Futerra
2008). Greenwashing, consisting of unsubstantiated or irrelevant environmental claims made by
organizations, gives rise to consumer complaints. As an illustration, in the United Kingdom in
2007, holiday and travel companies totalled 9.5 per cent of the greenwash complaints made by
consumers to the UK Advertising Standards Authority (Futerra 2008). Part of the problem may
lie with the complex nature of tourism itself. A tourism business might be very active in
marketing for responsible tourism but the trade-offs between environmental, social and economic
concerns at different levels (local, regional, national), for different components (the business
location and departure points, during travel, at the destination) and for the wider supplier and
distributor networks means that it is easy to criticise a tourism business for things that it hasn't
got right rather than acknowledging the many things that it has achieved. This is especially true
when you consider the wide range of consumer views and stances held on what sustainability
and its implementation really means. Highlighting the negative may serve to fuel overall
consumer cynicism and distrust.
The value-action gap
Labelled the value-action gap by the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC 2006) and as
the attitude-behaviour gap by the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) (2008), this discrepancy
