The Sustainable Tourism Mobility Forum, hosted by Breda University of Applied Sciences (BUas) on 27-28 May 2024, brought together industry leaders, researchers, and policymakers to discuss the urgent need for sustainable practices in tourism mobility. Organised in collaboration with the Netherlands Board of Tourism and Conventions (NBTC), the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy, CELTH, Polis, NECSTouR, the forum focused on the critical challenge of reducing carbon emissions from transport in the tourism sector.
Over 120 participants attended the first day of the event, including tour operators, destination management organisations, research institutions, transport operators, and government representatives, where discussions emphasised the necessary transition from aircraft and car-facilitated travel to more sustainable transportation modes in tourism travel, such as rail, coaches, cycling and walking.
1. Making flying less attractive
Climate change and long-distance flying are the biggest challenges for sustainable tourism, or, in distinguished Professor of Sustainable Tourism and Transport at BUas Paul Peeters’ words, “the ever-growing distances we travel” and “the need to discuss how to decouple the distance growth from the tourism growth”.
Frequent flyers, making up less than 1% of the population, account for more than 50% of aviation emissions, and business flights contribute 27% of Europe’s emissions. The unavoidable conclusion is that the most effective way to cut emissions before 2030 is to fly less for tourism.
Improving rail services is key to making flying less attractive. Flying between Amsterdam and Paris costs €112, while the train costs €177 and the coach €40. Increasing the share of rail travel is a shared responsibility, the participants agreed. While the railway industry itself can work on simplifying the process of booking train tickets and the development of unified passenger rights, the tourism industry, on its part, can further support the uptake of the rail travel for tourism.
“Trains are already a great alternative for plane and car. There could be much better and many more trains, but if the travel industry does not take a leap and start seriously selling the train offer, this is not going to happen”, said European Sleeper CEO Elmer van Buuren. “Night trains popularity among consumers are growing, but financing remains a challenge due to the lack of multi-year guarantees for European train paths.”
Moreover, the participants highlighted the importance of making sustainable mobility enjoyable and attractive, citing examples like coastal transport centres that offer free sustainable transport options to the beach, saving significant car kilometres annually.
Regardless of existing train connectivity, a significant barrier to sustainable tourism mobility is the availability of data and understanding traveller behaviour. Influencing consumer behaviour early in the customer journey is crucial, for example, encouraging travellers to choose destinations with good rail connections rather than those without can already significantly increase the share of rail travel. Additionally, integrating local transport into travel packages and financing it through tourist taxes were proposed as strategies to enhance public transport use by tourists.
2. Policy solutions and inter-industry collaboration
Beyond traveller behaviour, policymakers and industry leaders alike stressed the importance of government initiatives in reducing the climate impact of tourism travel. For the long-haul tourism mobility, imposing levies on jet fuel and VAT on international tickets were among the proposed initiatives, while for local tourism mobility, the better knowledge exchange between destinations, local tourism providers and mobility planners at urban, peri-urban and rural levels are necessary.
According to Mike Pinckaers, public affairs advisor at ANWB, “working on sustainability on national level is more than influencing modal shift. It starts with making residential areas more attractive and creating green and blue corridors between urban areas and countryside. Spatial planning has to reintroduce land use for recreational and tourism purposes to facilitate growing demand”.
Considering societal, economic and climate challenges ahead, a ‘Do nothing’ approach is risky for the sector.
Bert van Wee, Professor of Transport Policy at TU Delft
Besides policy, greater collaboration between various stakeholders, including governments, transport operators, and the tourism industry can contribute to the lowering of emissions not only for the tourism industry, but for transport overall. Tourism industry and research can learn and adapt from existing transport research and innovations and, vice versa, transport can learn from existing tourism practices, Professor of Transport Policy at TU Delft, Bert van Wee said. Sustainable mobility solutions must be integrated into broader mobility policies, breaking down silos between different sectors.
“The event definitely underscored the critical importance of sustainable tourism mobility at various levels. Next to the clear insights for the future policy action and research directions, it brought valuable ideas to include in tourism transport education. The forum did let see that the tourism industry needs specialists with a deep understanding of the underlying drivers and reasons for long-haul travel and of all the tourism transport modalities, to be able to develop a sustainable tourism travel offer, ensuring the industry’s sustainable transition”, Nina Nesterova, Professor of Sustainable Tourism Transport at BUas and host of the forum, concluded after the two days.
