In recent years, environmental sustainability has increased significantly becoming one of the main trends for 2023. Being in the month of the Earth (April 22th is the “Earth Day”), frames how interesting it is to know more about sustainable travelers. Society is increasingly aware of the damage caused by different human actions and they carry on with this responsibility in their holidays.
We investigated how a sustainable tourist travels, behaves at the destination and how they (we ☺️) plan the trip. To do this research, we rely on travelers who have already taken actions for taking care of the environment in their travels; for example: compensated CO2 emissions, chosen a train or bus over a plane, and others. And we also consider those who give an extreme importance to environmental health.
Who is the Ultimate Environmental Traveller?
We search in Travellyze data in order to know the demographic main insights of the segment to build the "buyer persona". The most representative "buyer persona" for this sector is female, with an age range between 55 and 64 years, married and with a vocational education.
How much do sustainable travelers earn and how much do they spend on travel?
Once we know the main characteristics of the buyer person, Travellyze provides us with the opportunity to go deeper into different insights. We can know their household income and their budget for the holidays.
Household Income
In the case of the household income of European sustainable tourists, 32.6% of them have an income between €18,000 and €35,999.
Budget planning
As the graph below indicates, 46.2% of European sustainable tourists expect to spend the same budget on holidays in 2023 as they did in the past year. In this case, the travel budget will be between 1,000-2,999 EUR (37.1%).
What sources of information influence these travelers?
The main source of travel inspiration for this group of travelers is through friends and family (48.3%). The other sources are online, and include:
- search engines such as Google and Bing (36.9%),
- online reviews sites such as Tripadvisor (33.8%) and
- social media sources, such as Instagram (31.9%) .
What aspects of a holiday are most important to sustainable tourists?
This segment of travelers is very responsible and respectful with the environment, they take into account the damages that can be done and try first of all to avoid them, besides taking care of it at the same time.
This graph shows the different actions that sustainable travelers do as part of taking care of the environment on their holidays.
How do they plan the trip?
This segment does the reservation mostly online. However, travelers combine services or make individual reservations. They mostly prefer to book a package trip (flight + accommodation) online at the travel agency's website (32.2%).
In some cases, they also book accommodation directly via the accommodation website (30.2%) or they book separate flights and hotels online via different booking portals (26.6%).
What are their favorite types of holidays?
Sustainable european travelers tend to choose types of holidays that don't have a negative effect on the environment and at the same time, try to take care of it. Most of them choose sun and beach holidays (51.4%), trips to relax and rest (44.8%) and also, cultural vacations (39.3%) where historical and cultural experiences are the main objective in order to get closer to the culture of the destination they are traveling to.
What accommodation and transportation sustainable travelers choose?
This segment of travelers stay mostly in 3 or 4 star hotels (34.2%). They also stay in bed and breakfast accommodation (28.1%) and a smaller number rent their own vacation home (26.7%).
Considering the trasnportation, most of the travelers travel with their own vehicle (37.6%). The flight premium economy or economy is a good option for travelers (34.1%) but if they can choose the first opction, they must travel by car. Some tourists travel by train (32%), ferry (28.8%) or bus (15.5%).
When do they travel?
On domestic short holidays, the months that sustainable european travelers choose are:
- August
- July
- June
On international short holidays, they choose:
- June
- July
- August
How do sustainable tourists rank the image of each destination?
At Travellyze, we offer an image ranking based on a comprehensive algorithm with three dimensions as benchmarks: awareness, perception and experience.
The ranking below clearly shows that the destination with the most favorable image in the short term demand for the European target is Italy, followed by Portugal, Spain, Scotland and, in fifth place, Iceland. Also shows that Spain has increased 20.7% compared to August 2022.
As mentioned above, it is also possible to know the level of awareness to know how much this segment knows about tourism offering. We can see that all the destinations increase compared to August 2022.
Conclusion
Sustainable tourists travel in a responsible and respectful way with the environment. They often prefer transportation that emits less carbon emissions, such as trains or buses, rather than planes.
Sustainable tourists tend to look for green and low environmental impact accommodations, such as hotels that use environmentally friendly practices. Considering the type of trip, they tend to look for community based tourism options or activities to interact with the local culture.
The demographic profile of this segment represents the 8.6% of the adult population of the selected markets: Spain, France, Italy, Netherlands, Germany, United Kingdom, Finland, Norway, Denmark and Sweden. The equivalent of 26,904,900 people (Italy 14.1%, Spain 11.9% and Germany 10.8%, each). We can see that all these people are aware of the impact of their trips and look for more respectful holiday options.