Green Travel Transformation, Germany

For more and more people, the environmental and social compatibility of their holiday trips is an important criterion. However, a lack of information often stands in the way of realising this booking preference. Often, the necessary knowledge about sustainable travel is lacking, or sustainable offers are not recognisable to customers and travel agency employees because they are not labelled accordingly.

Travel providers face the challenge of classifying sustainable offers and integrating them into their information and booking systems in such a way that they are meaningful and clearly recognisable for sales and customers.

The approximately 10,000 German travel agencies are an indispensable sales channel for sustainable travel. In order to ensure optimal advice on sustainable travel in travel agencies, there is a need to raise awareness among travel distributors and remove the barriers mentioned above.

The project focuses on three areas:

• Identification of sustainability-oriented areas of impact and transformation potential in tourism

• Making sustainable offers visible in travel distribution

• Imparting knowledge on the topic of sustainability to tourism professionals in general and travel distributors in particular

The jungle of tourism certificates in the area of eco and sustainability labels now comprises around 180 different labels, which are difficult to differentiate even for industry experts. Methodological principles for evaluating and hierarchising current evaluation systems for sustainable products and offers are therefore being developed and implemented in order to establish sustainability transparency for end consumers and distributors.

Furthermore, coaching programmes will raise awareness and bring about a long-term transformation of work and consulting routines in travel agencies. To achieve this goal, various training formats are to be developed in cooperation with practitioners.

Project objectives

• Increase sales of sustainable travel

• Strengthen the visibility of sustainable travel offers through labelling

• Make sustainable travel offers easier to book via information and booking systems

• Integration of sustainability into consulting discussions in tourism

• Establishment of an industry standard for continuous sustainability awareness for small and medium-sized enterprises

Through competent advice from travel agency employees, travellers will recognise the advantages and opportunities of sustainable tourism and will become more aware of and more likely to choose sustainable travel. This will increase the proportion of sustainable travel in the total number of trips booked in the long term.