For years, the travel and tourism sector has been awash with greenwashing. There are notable exceptions, but marketers have created false and exaggerated green claims all too often. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in the UK has begun to take action on misleading claims against, amongst others, Ryanair, Deutsche Lufthansa AG, easyJet, Finnair, Etihad and Virgin Atlantic.
In May 2023 the ASA found against Intrepid for their “People & planet-friendly small group adventures” claim. Accepting that Intrepid does not offer flights, the ASA determined that “it would be necessary to travel, in most cases by flying, in order to take part…. the absolute claim ‘people & planet-friendly adventures’ had not been adequately substantiated.”
From the business or destination perspective, verification issues arise only when specific claims are made as the PR and marketing teams seek to create substance and differentiate the product or experience. In the 1980s, when ecotourism emerged as a marketing concept, there was, and still is, no precise definition. No claim was being made that could be questioned. In practice, ecotourism products may have a better academically or professionally qualified guide, but no other more specific claims were made. Ecotourism is one of those warm and “friendly” words so imprecisely defined as unlikely to be actionable.
There is plenty of evidence that travellers are concerned about the negative impacts of travel. In Booking’s 2024 research published in April, 71% of travellers say they want to leave the places they visit better than when they arrived, up from 66% last year. According to the same research, 45% of travellers say that accommodation labelled as more sustainable is more appealing. Obviously, people’s accommodation choices are complex, and many factors play a part, but sustainability is one of them. Understandably, travellers crave simplicity. In the Booking survey, 67% agreed that all travel booking sites should use the same sustainable certifications or labels.
Travalyst has launched a list of 49 sustainable accommodation certification schemes which it says comply with their criteria i) third-party audit; ii) publicly available standards; iii) “Focuses on evaluating the impact of social and/or economic, and/or environmental factors, among others, as encompassed within, but not restricted, to the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals.” The list of certifications, standards, and schemes compliant with Travalyst criteria is available online.
The sustainability agenda is very long and wide. Consumers attach different weights to different issues, such as animal welfare, greenhouse gas emissions, and labour conditions. In drought-prone or potable water-scarce areas, travellers will likely be concerned about water consumption per bed night. In 2018, when Cape Town was suffering a severe drought, it was not possible to find out which hotels were using the least water. In the CICC, urinal flushing had been restricted, and the washbasin taps were turned off; hand sanitiser was provided instead. In the hotel where I was staying, the only change I could see was that the plugs in the bath had been removed. I was denied the opportunity to make an informed choice and stay in a low water consumption hotel.
There are some serious weaknesses with certification:
- It is opaque – the consumer does not know how well the accommodation is doing in tackling the issues that the consumer cares about. The traveller may book a certified business only to find that it has poor labour conditions or uses water profligately.
- There is no remedy for the traveller when the hotel fails to live up to the “promise” implied by certification. This may be because:
- the accommodation provider does not care about the sustainability issues that the particular consumer cares about;
- the management is not managing the accommodation in compliance with its certification. If you book a certified hotel and find that as you enter the room, the lights are on, the TV is telling you who you are, and the temperature is set at 15°, there is little you can effectively do.
- Without clear statements of sustainability practice and performance, the consumer cannot seek compensation for misselling.
- Each time a consumer experiences a failure to manage the accommodation in compliance with their expectations based on the certificate awarded by the unaccountable certification agency, faith in certification declines further.
As I have argued here before, “Certification may be the safest form of greenwashing. It certainly denies consumers information about what sustainability measures the business delivers and any means of holding the business to account for misselling.”
I welcome the EU Green Claims Directive. It could allow consumers to hold businesses and destinations accountable for misselling, but that requires explicit claims against which the business or destinations can be tested. Certification does not provide that, and there is no mechanism for ensuring that hotels manage their property in compliance with their certificate.
The implementation of the Green Claims Directive has not yet been finalised. The detail matters. There are two significant risks:
- Certification becomes the norm, denying consumers the specific information they need to make informed decisions and to seek redress for misselling.
- Fear of breaching the Green Claims Directive leads to greenhushing by businesses and destinations – removing part of the motivation to adopt sustainability practices.
It is obviously in the public interest that businesses and destinations should not be permitted to make misleading claims; regulation and enforcement are essential to achieving this public good, enabling consumers to effectively choose better travel and tourism services and experiences. Given the increasing consumer concern about negative environmental and socio-economic impacts, businesses and destinations are increasingly motivated to respond to this consumer interest to gain market advantage.
It follows that effective regulation against misleading claims is essential. How it is done is critically important. Relying on certification will make greenwashing safer for those who can afford it. Continuing to fail to deliver on the promise of certification will further delay positive change in the marketplace.
The EU should provide online training for businesses and destinations on how safely to make green claims. The ASA offers a range of short online and affordable courses; the Green Claims Directive would be more effective in achieving its aims if training and advice were part of the package.
