Since the 1980s, an increasing number of consultants and campaigners have argued that environmental damage by industry may be reduced by consumer demand for environmentally-friendly products. This demand has been claimed to provide economic pressure for companies to change practices to a more sustainable basis. However, critics have asked how far such measures may genuinely lead to long-term change, and whether trusting environmental regulation to consumers and companies may achieve the aims of environmentalists. In association with some interesting results from a series of surveys conducted in the UK, we can consider the market value of sustainable tourism and modes of regulation more effectively.
It is now widely acknowledged that many industries cause damage to the environment, or involve practices which impact negatively on certain communities or sectors of society. However, adopting practices to avoid these problems are still generally seen as damaging to business performance. Many companies see environmental protection as "a moral duty rather than a commercial imperative". It is therefore extremely important to find ways to reverse this belief, and consequently achieve environmental protection in ways which industry is willing to support.
Increasingly, the debate about environmental regulation is changing from a traditional dichotomy between draconian command-and-control legislation, and the allocation of resources under a free market. An increasing number of companies are adopting practices of environmental regulation on a voluntary basis, or are becoming involved in the negotiation of regulation with governments and campaigning groups. In some cases, these measures may be seen to be necessary by companies as a result of the growing liability for environmental accidents like the Exxon Valdez oil spill, or the increasing responsibility expected from business by company employees or consumers. Yet, in addition, theorists are also arguing that practices of environmental protection may provide competitive advantage by reducing energy or recycling waste, or responding to new market demand for environmental goods and services.
 | |  Scorched Earth
Many hill tribes in south-east Asia used slash and burn agricultural techniques, which means that they cut down forest and burn trees to create farmland to cultivate rice, vegetables and until recently, their most famous crop: opium. Some have argued that the introduction of tourism is a source of revenue and livelihood. Aid projects have also enabled them to find alternative cash crops, such as coffee bean. Others argue that practised correctly, slash and burn practices can actually be beneficial to the landscape and that forests are fully able to repair themselves.
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|  | | | Rubbish Collection Tourism has increased the production of urban waste, especially from fast food stores. This photograph was taken in Baguio, in the Phillipines. These waste-pickers or waste-recyclers, make money from recycling the valuable items of domestic waste. Campaigners are seeking to explain the commercial advantages of sustainable tourism to businesses, in order to enable them to adopt practices proactively without waiting for increased ethical or green consumerism to set the agenda. |
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Such theorists have claimed environmental practices do not just offer new business opportunities to industry, but may also result in good environmental regulation as well. Table 1 shows a range of regulatory instruments available to industry and government, classified according to degree of direct involvement, and responsibility of industry or government. In marketing terms, this may allow companies to respond to consumer demand for environmentally-friendly goods or improve the company image by advertising the adoption of practices of environmental responsibility. However, critics have questioned how far adopting practices based on market image may only be to pre-empt legislation which may impact on business performance. Similarly, it has been questioned how far responding to consumer demand for environmentalism may result in effective or long-term regulation. 
(after Janssen et al, 1995:75) | Table 1: This shows a range of regulatory instruments available to industry and government, classified according to degree of direct involvement and who is responsible. |
Companies regulating tourism
Critics have claimed that voluntary practices of regulation may only result in a superficial response to environmental regulation, and that some form of government intervention is still required to create long-term environmental regulation. In particular, companies have often complained about the problem of so-called 'free riders', or companies who are not willing to adopt practices of responsibility, because these may undermine the competitive position of companies who are willing to take action. This has led theorists of business regulation to propose limited government legislation to ensure a 'level-playing-field' to ensure that no company can avoid environmental responsibility, but allow each company the ability to develop its own environmental responses.
In 1992, Elkington and Hailes published Holidays That Don't Cost the Earth, in which they began the task of starting a consumer revolution in tourism. Like their earlier work on green consumerism in general, this book explained the various environmental and social impacts of tourism, and developed a number of recommendations for tourists to follow to conduct sustainable tourism, and to place pressure on tourism companies to change practices. These included activities like booking holidays only with companies who adopted and enforced environmental codes of conduct, or selecting destinations with strict controls
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| Thinking Point | | | Can you think of ways in which tourist practices could be made more "sustainable" and contribute to the development of a site? | | |
However, regulation of the mass market, through consumer pressure or otherwise, remains extremely difficult. Firstly, tourism, or recreation, has no tangible lasting product but is based on image and presentation, and often involves certain false or stereotypical visions of foreign destinations. From a sales perspectives, package holidays have 'time value', meaning that tour operators and travel agencies have the urgent task of selling holidays before the starting date or else they cease to exist. Secondly, the tourism industry is composed of several different activities such as construction, transport, hotel management, or tour guiding. Each has different business objectives and markets, plus varying environmental and social impacts. Therefore, not all sectors are equally responsible for damage, or can act together to prevent it. Thirdly, the tourism market, particularly in the UK, is characterised by extreme price competition under oligopoly. Companies therefore compete on the basis of price, and oppose any measures which may increase costs. In particular, large companies, such as Thomson, Airtours and First Choice in the UK are vertically integrated, and have to fill seats on charter flights to avoid bankruptcy. Overcrowding resulting from charter flights has been claimed to lead to severe environmental damage at destinations. These problems have been blamed for the tourism industry's inability to act together to overcome so-called 'boom-and-bust' cycles of development in tourism destinations, where rapid development leads to a decline in tourism. However, there is also evidence that some companies knowingly act irresponsibly for profit. For example, when one charter-flight operator was asked if he knew his operations were overcrowding the infrastructure of Turkey, he allegedly said, "I was making money. I knew it was wrong, but no-one told me to stop." Furthermore, some of the broader aims of sustainable tourism are also difficult to communicate to business and consumers. Campaigning organisations like the British-based Tourism Concern have been criticised for being out-of-touch with industry for urging companies to change practices without regard to the problems of business. Plus, some campaigns like the opposition of sex tourism, or asking tourists to boycott regimes like Burma because of their human-rights record may be seen to be more moralistic than overtly aiming to reduce environmental damage. Like the guidelines of Elkington and Hailes such ethical consumerism may be considered to contradict the common purpose of tourism for relaxation. Others have argued that producing tourism in response to a small niche who consider themselves responsible consumers may not reflect good practice, plus may also impose unhelpful values onto host communities particularly in developing countries. Wheeller, for example, has labeled ecotourism 'egotourism', and other research has pointed out that marketing stereotypical images of developing countries for tourist consumption may promote demeaning images, or prolong falsehoods about these countries. Consumers regulating tourism
The argument that consumer pressure may change tourism-industry practices is therefore restricted by the ability of companies to control which image of environmental responsibility may be presented to consumers, and by the apparent belief that ethical consumers make up only a small part of the market. Additionally, academics and campaigners also argue that consumer demand may lead to stereotypical forms of tourism, which do not help development. Plus, the mass tourism market is characterised by price-cutting, and a reluctance of companies to change business practice in case it increases costs. Evidence also suggests that consumer interest in sustainable tourism varies widely across Europe.
As a result of these, the ability for "consumer pressure to turn the tourism industry around", as argued by Elkington and Hailes may be less than they hoped. 
Tim Forsyth | A mural in Thailand illustrating the various natural attractions of the country. Focusing on the variety in various countries would mean that tourists would be increasingly forced to consider options other than sun, sea and sand. They also could participate more fully in all attractions at a destination. Many companies, and in particular consultancies, believe this could allow the tourism industry to combat price competition, but also adopt environmental practices as a way to achieve this |
Many companies believe consumer interest in sustainable tourism is low, and only of interest to a small section of the market. Consequently, companies often considered the adoption of practices of sustainable tourism to be the creation of niche products such as ecotourism or culturally-based tourism which many of them thought outside their main interest in the mass market. Concerning the mass market, most companies reiterated the problem of price-cutting competition described above. As a result of this, most companies saw no possibility for implementing sustainable tourism until this need for short-term profitability could be overcome. These opinions therefore indicate that the UK industry still confuses sustainable tourism with ethical or green consumerism, rather than something that could be applied to the mass market. Companies also had little optimism in consumer interest in sustainable tourism rising in the near future. These suggestions indicate that relying on consumer interest to pressurise companies into sustainability may be optimistic, and may only result in the increase of niche products, rather than a change in the mass market. Furthermore, results suggested that companies themselves considered voluntary practices of regulation to be generally ineffective. Research indicates the answer to the question of who should be responsible for implementing sustainable tourism. All commercial sectors of the industry, or 63.8 percent of those questioned, believed this should be host governments via legislation, and consequently voluntary, or marketing-based approaches to regulation are seen to be less effective. However, although these findings are disappointing, the survey did reveal some opinions that concerted effort may produce change that is beneficial for both business and sustainable tourism. Many companies stated that they saw a trend towards greater quality in holiday products. The European Community Initiative on Package Holidays in 1992 tightened regulation of tourism marketing in order to make advertising more accurate, and industry members also saw a trend towards improving safety and environmental standards. This trend was claimed to have the ability to combat intense price competition, and also to allow companies to adopt practices of sustainable tourism. In the survey, a large number of companies claimed that standard marketing practice in circumstances of price competition was to allow companies the ability to compete on more than price alone. This was normally achieved by differentiating standard products by adding value or better quality to products. For tourism, this would mean increasing the variety of standard holiday packages marketed. By doing this, tourists may no longer have the standard option of one-or-two weeks of sun-and-sand, but also could participate more fully in all attractions at a destination. The survey revealed that companies, and particularly consultancies, believed this could allow the tourism industry to combat price competition, but also adopt environmental practices as a way to achieve this. Quality tourism: a way of self-regulation
Evidence suggests this demand for environmental 'quality' may already exist. For example, in 1993, a survey indicated that 49 percent of British consumers would pay an extra £20 on a £300 holiday if they were guaranteed a clean beach and sea, with an additional 26 percent saying they would pay £40 more. A more recent survey also indicated that about 30 percent of British tourists would pay between £5 and £8 extra to ensure that the tourism companies involved in their holiday are committed to environmental protection. These findings suggest that attempts to generate consumer interest in sustainable tourism on the basis of 'ethical' or 'green' principles as urged in Holidays That Don't Cost the Earth may always be seen to be external to the mass market. However, attempts to gain consumer support for environmentalism by presenting it as another form of 'quality' may be much more likely to succeed, and may be linked more closely to consumers beliefs at present. In addition, evidence from the survey suggests that the industry itself considers this to be commercially attractive because it addresses their main problem of price competition. Consequently, the adoption of this technique does not have to wait for an increase in consumer interest, because it already exists in the demand for 'quality', and because it is already in industry's interests to break price competition. Furthermore, arguments described above suggest that it may not always be advisable to let market interest dictate the nature of tourism as this may lead to orientalist or ecotourist forms of tourism.
Elkington and Hailes wrote, "What can we as consumers do to turn the tide? Must we simply accept what the tourism industry is prepared to offer us because we have no option? Of course not, no more than we would let manufacturers of environment-unfriendly detergents, cars, or washing machines off the hook". This is an attractive proposition, but evidence suggests it may be undermined by the ability of companies to present their own messages of environmental performance; the long-standing belief that ethical consumerism has to be a niche market; and the lackof awareness of tourists. The problems of the mass-market opinions are acknowledged by Elkington and Hailes: they write tourists should adopt the statement of Marcel Proust that the best journey is not to travel through a thousand different countries with the same pair of eyes, but to see the same country with a thousand pair of eyes. Revising the quality of holidays according to sustainable principles will mean depending less on traditional attractions like sun-and-sand, and on becoming more aware of the cultural and environmental subtleties of each destination Effective environmental and social regulation of tourism may, therefore, need not depend on responding to market interest, but in explaining the commercial advantages to companies of adopting practices proactively. In addition, campaigners should seek to incorporate the discourse of sustainable tourism more within the mainstream desire for quality tourism in order to avoid being seen as a niche sector. As such, this may allow companies to respond entrepreneurially to market interest, but also abide by ethical concerns.
However, before this may operate, it may be necessary to exclude 'free riders', or companies who are unwilling to act responsibly, and who may undermine the commercial standing of businesses that are willing to take action. During the survey, companies suggested large companies like Thomson could have the ability and power to develop guidelines for industry to follow. However, one company director explained that any activity of collusion between large industry members, which may lead to reducing price competition, might create opposition from the UK Government Office of Fair Trading, and consumer groups. Debate may therefore have to move to convincing government that cooperation by responsible companies may allow environmental regulation and commercial advantage for these companies, and consequently that legislation will have to exclude companies not willing to act responsibly. As such, this may allow environmental costs to be internalised in the production process, and encourage tourists to see holidays as valuable, rather than cheap. As one tourism association director said during the survey, "the insistence that cheap is beautiful has been an illness in the British tourism industry for too long." Taking the initiative
Instead of waiting for consumer demand for sustainable tourism to increase, campaigners should explain the commercial advantages of sustainable tourism to businesses to enable them to adopt practices proactively without waiting for increased ethical or green consumerism. Market interest should not be seen to be a catalyst for sustainable tourism because of the belief among companies that ethical or green consumerism comes only from a small sector of the market, and therefore may be confused with demand for niche products such as ecotourism or culturally-based tourism. Such practices do not impact on the mass market, and may encourage forms of tourism that place pressure on threatened ecosystems and prolong stereotypical images of remote communities that do not help development. | |
| Thinking Point | | | What kind of incentives could be offered to companies and resort managers to reduce the negative impacts of tourism? | | |
Furthermore, evidence suggests that there is still uncertainty about the meaning of sustainable tourism among consumers. This may make it possible for companies or industry organisations to develop their own responses to environmental regulation which may not reflect the recommendations of environmentalists, but which may be used to present an image of environmental responsibility.Early optimism in calling for greater consumer pressure to change tourism-industry practice may underestimate the ability for companies to control which image of environmental responsibility is being presented, and may also neglect current commercial opportunities under sustainable tourism which do not require an increase in consumer demand. Instead of expecting the market to become more ethical, campaigners should incorporate the discourse of sustainability within more mainstream marketing concepts like quality. |
