Sustainable Tourism Starts with Communities

I’ve been asked recently how sustainability impacts local tourism and how local tour operators can benefit from the latest initiatives around economic and environmental sustainability. For many local tour operators, the questions surrounding sustainability usually focus on costs and impact on profits. For example, what can a tour operator do to be environmentally active and remain profitable? The answer depends on the operators geographic location and their market. In North Vancouver, for example, which is a rather affluent tourist destination there are a number of local van and bus tour operators who take tourists to local attractions like the Capilano Suspension Bridge, Grouse Mountain, or the Lonsdale Quay. All of them drive fifteen passenger (or larger) vans or mini-buses. One creative entrepreneur however, uses a Toyota SUV powered by vegetable oil. The company, called North Van Green Tours, provides a very similar service to the other tour companies, but has added an environmental spin that promotes the sustainability model. Obviously there are added costs to the conversion of buses and vans to run on vegetable oil, but in an already very competitive landscape, the added marketing benefit may be worth the expense.

In other less affluent communities, local tour operators can promote a sustainable model of tourism by focusing on non-motorized methods of transport. In Melaka, Malaysia, for example tourists can take a human powered rickshaw tour of templates, mosques, and unique homes. These types of tours are sometimes difficult to find because they are not mainstream and often off the beaten path, but they are low impact, carbon neutral, more interesting, and generally less costly then the motorized air conditioned equivalent. Encouraging and promoting this type of tourism is difficult to do on an operator by operator basis and requires the intervention of a DMO or regional tourism agency to help foster innovation and diversity in the tourism products delivered by small communities. The other role of the DMO is to ensure that these products make their way up the consumer food chain and become the norm rather than the exception when travelers search for local tour products. Travelers that have unique or interesting travel experiences tend to share those experiences and will use social networking or blogging tools to promote them.

In this age of the Long Tail of Travel and the shift in consumer buying patterns, small operators that provide unqiue experiential travel opportunities are discovering that social media, user generated content, and peer to peer reviews are providing them with marketing opportunities that many would not otherwise consider or afford. By helping to promote local tourism and the distribution of local products, we can all promote a model of sustainable tourism.

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