Can you ever truly take a sustainable holiday abroad?
Hotels and tourism are doing their darnedest to tell you that you can
Can you ever truly take a sustainable holiday abroad?
Unless you decide to swim to Tahiti from your Zone 3 London home, taking in the delights of Thames sewerage, the cold North Sea, and then the reckless expanse of both the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean, the answer is categorically - no.
But brands tell us all the time that we can. That we’re making the right choice, the sustainable choice, by booking with them. A quick glance on Booking.com, a hotel meta booking platform, flags hotels’ sustainability credentials by using green leaves. The problem is that many hotels and resorts in holiday destinations require a flight to get there. And then there’s cruises. The Times newspaper has described Carnival Cruises, one of the world’s biggest cruise liners, as the most sustainable option. Cruise ships are famously polluting, needing vast amounts of fuel to carry their bulk around the seas - not to mention the significant amount of liquid waste generated by each ship, much of which is dumped in the sea.
Flights are also high C02e emitters. There’s no getting away from however cleanly you try to live your life, however many glass jars you recycle, take one flight and your efforts go up in smoke.
So this is the bad stuff, and it sounds bad enough that maybe we should consider not bothering leaving the house at all. Cycle to the south coast instead. The good news is by the time you’ve got there, it’ll be time to head back anyway, so you won’t need to worry about your hotel emissions.
There’s more of us than ever before
We’re about seven billion people on this planet. We’re getting richer as a whole – even if it doesn’t feel like it at times. That means more of us can afford to take flights and treat ourselves to vacations than ever before.
It’s only in the last 50 years that people have felt entitled to holidays, and only in the last 30 that people felt entitled to holidays abroad. And for many, especially those with teenagers, a week in Whitby won’t cut it. Demand to travel further afield is putting pressure on the planet’s natural resources. This, all while brands and businesses are coming under fire to make changes to their sustainability pledges, and fast. Afterall, unlike eating or wearing clothes, taking a longhaul holiday isn’t a necessity. It’s definitely nice, but for who, and for how long?
This makes the travel sector an area ripe for greenwashing
Brands are panicking because it’s a big journey to overhaul the travel industry overnight. It’s much more straightforward for a clothing brand to stop sourcing clothes from sweatshops, for example, but a plane can’t develop a battery-powered plane immediately. That panic feeds into messaging. Big promises are made, and the consumer can feel bombarded and hoodwinked into believing what the brand is saying.
A quick glance at the sustainability news this week flags key changes brands and businesses are making, and some of the issues preventing the travel sector from being able to make big strides in this area. In no particular order, here is a snapshot of sustainability news from March 14, 2023:
“Cognitive dissonance” - why some consumers give up plastic straws but buy a new car
Travel sector mulls green future but tourists unwilling to pay - “Tourists around the world and especially in Europe are supportive of more eco-friendly trips but reluctant to carry the extra cost, according to studies and industry executives.”
Ireland well-placed to make sustainable aviation fuel - which is an article about how, hypothetically, Ireland has some of the resources needed to make SAF.
Indonesia’s Traveloka eyes up more sustainable options for tourists - Indonesia’s travel booking site to roll out more sustainable options
This random snapshot shows some of the key issues facing the travel sector and those who want to travel. The blunt reality is that few people think enough about sustainability when they book holidays. Many of us have grown up feeling like we deserve to fly, or get on a fast train or drive a car. When we say holiday, we think swaying palms and eating a delicious seafood curry. We don’t necessarily think - Dorking.
Having this conversation with friends, it’s almost certain you’ll hear the words: “I work hard, I deserve this.”
And while that’s debatable – do we deserve the opportunity to destroy something? - saying ‘no’ in response is a bit of a party-pooper reply. So what can we do to take control of our own holiday and actually parse through the bullshit?
Take the train – trains are significantly less polluting than planes. You can get to Barcelona in 10 hours door to door, and while that’s not a four hour flight, you’ll feel significantly better about yourself and your time away while you’re there. Come back with a tan, and that smug holiday glow.
Fly with airlines that invest in new fleets – flying is polluting, but giving up planes forever isn’t necessarily possible for those with family abroad and a curiosity about the world. Choose airlines that invest in new planes. They tend to be lighter, have more efficient engines, and thus burn less fuels.
Take a direct flight – It’s also best to avoid taking too much of a circuitous route to get there. Sometimes you can bag a cheap ticket to Bangkok via Somalia, Djibouti and Japan, but that’s a lot of taking off and landing – try to choose the most direct option with the newest plane to make it a slightly greener option.
Think about the hotel - hotels are waste black holes. Think about it. Big resorts that have to ship in piles of food for buffets so guests have an illusion of plenty. The generated waste of dozens and dozens of rooms. All those wrappings from tiny soaps. Greenwashing is ripe in hotels. Huge resorts that have to power multiple swimming pools and gigantic gas guzzling kitchens. Yes, they’re convenient, but like cars and ready-meals, at what cost? Choose a smaller, family-run hotel, or an Airbnb so you can control your own waste.
Hotels and cruises love to tell us how green they are. But hotels and resorts are starting to realise a single truth - that plastics and waste are not only severely damaging the environment, but they’re also ruining it aesthetically, which is a problem for tourists who come to spend time in a beautiful place. With the advent of smartphones, nothing is off limits for travellers, and that includes flagging environmental issues. This includes toothbrushes washing up in the Galapagos and witnessing plastic bags in dead seabirds’ stomachs. None of this frames tourism hotspots in a good light, and many hotels and travel operators are considering ways they can be more sustainable.
Cycle there - You too, could cycle to China.
So, should you book a holiday abroad?
If you choose to book your holiday abroad, take pause and think about whether you’re being taken in by the PR.
Just because a cruise ship has bought a lot of plants and dotted them around the place, it doesn’t make it sustainable. Likewise, a lot of hotels built from concrete pop a living wall in the foyer, but other than making the place smell like mould, it doesn’t do much for a building’s sustainability credentials. We can justify travel. It’s one of life’s great opportunities.
But it’s a time for thoughtful travel too.