Founder’s Note: Sustainability

Sustainability has become the golden ticket in tourism. From luxury safaris to corporate retreats, they promise eco-conscious adventures, ticking off the right boxes with carbon offsets, plastic bans, and eco-labels. At first glance, their efforts seem like the real deal. But dig deeper, and the illusion begins to crumble.

Our industry frequently highlights carbon offsets as a solution to the environmental impact of traveling. They claim that by funding projects like tree planting or renewable energy, they compensate for the emissions caused by long-haul flights and carbon-intensive activities. While it sounds good on paper, the reality is far more complex. Many of these projects take years to sequester meaningful amounts of carbon, and the actual reduction in emissions is often negligible: The amount of?CO2?emissions of a single transatlantic flight per passenger alone is what one tree captures in its lifetime.

Ultimately, it is a quick fix to claim sustainability without tackling the root problem: the carbon-heavy nature of modern tourism. Without a shift to truly green (and viable) technologies, such as renewable energy-powered transportation, offsetting alone cannot achieve the deep environmental changes the industry needs.

The industry also jumped on the plastic reduction bandwagon, touting their bans on single-use plastics like straws and plastic bottles. While these efforts are commendable, they distract from the far larger environmental footprint, and allows the industry to appear eco-conscious while ignoring more significant, systemic issues.

Eco-labels and certifications are another popular way to virtue signal sustainability. The criteria for earning these badges are often weak, rewarding companies for small, symbolic actions like installing energy-efficient lightbulbs or cutting water use at corporate offices.

Without stringent standards or oversight from local authorities, eco-labels become little more than marketing tools, allowing the promotion of an image of environmental responsibility without making meaningful contributions or sacrifices.

While the industry’s environmental efforts often fall short, their approach to social sustainability has made more tangible progress. Many companies are now working to ensure that tourism benefits local communities, particularly by supporting small businesses and local suppliers. By partnering with locally owned guesthouses, restaurants, and tour operators, the industry helps keeping tourism dollars in the community and contribute to more equitable development.

In addition, there’s been a growing emphasis on inclusivity, by creating opportunities for people with disabilities and ensuring that destinations are more accessible to all travelers. While these efforts don’t attract as much attention as environmental initiatives, they represent real steps toward a more socially sustainable tourism industry.

Besides relying on the local infrastructure as much as possible, we are proud to work together with Impact Box?in Budapest, who offer unique, handcrafted and natural products to our guests on their travels that have been carefully selected by Hungarian social enterprises and organizations that in many cases employ people from underserved backgrounds.

Our industry is quick to tout their green credentials, promoting carbon offsets, plastic bans, and eco-labels as evidence of their environmental commitment. But when scrutinized, these measures often amount to little more than greenwashing. The lack of truly green technologies and robust local policies makes it difficult for the tourism industry to achieve meaningful environmental sustainability. The way it is being communicated, makes gauging the actual, very incremental progress difficult and eradicates any possibility of having an honest conversation about it.

On the social side, however, we have made more credible progress by supporting local economies and marginalized communities. While far from perfect, these efforts offer a glimpse of what true sustainability could look like in the tourism industry.

For now, the promise of environmental sustainability remains largely an illusion, but the social gains are real and worth building upon, and should be considered newsworthy.

Your’s Truly,

Tamás Békássy

Founder of Heed DMC | Mobility | Guide