Sustainability Marketing Takes a Holiday

Given that it is holiday (or vacation, for those viewing this from the US) season, it seems like a good moment to take a break from our normal lives and think about sustainability marketing in the context of 'getting away from it all'. Holidays are an interesting type of consumption to consider from a sustainability perspective for several reasons.

For one thing our holidays can account for a considerable amount of our ecological footprint as consumers. How much depends on exactly how and where you holiday, and how you calculate the impacts. Estimates vary but some research suggests that up to one sixth of our personal ecological footprint for a year may be left on the beach where we spend our two week holiday. In 2002 WWF created a holiday ecofootprinting tool and tested it on some typical overseas holidays (two week Mediterranean holidays flying from the UK). Not surprisingly around half the impact was related to transport, and particularly the flights. The next most important category was waste, which accounted for roughly a quarter to a third of impacts. Food accounted for 6-9% and excursions a surprisingly low 3-6%.

Some of these impacts depend on the hotel operators and service providers at destinations, but there are obvious things that we can do as consumers to reduce our footprint. Looking for alternatives to flying, trying to avoid waste, and eating local seasonal produce are among the simple steps we can take.

The interesting thing is that some research evidence suggests that when we go on holiday we may sometimes forget to pack our environmental concerns. An interesting paper published last year in the journal Environment and Behavior by Dolnicar and Grün (Vol. 41/ 5, pp 693-714) found that people did not tend to maintain their normal domestic pro-environmental behaviors when on holiday. Psychologically we seem to treat those two weeks as a break from our ecological responsibilities as well as our work responsibilities. Similarly the consumer segment identified by McDonald and Oates which they labelled 'Exceptors' (see chapter 4 of "Sustainability Marketing"), is made up of people with strong environmental values who generally seek to integrate them into their consumption and other behaviors. However they also designate a certain section of their lives as ‘off limits’ in terms of considering the environmental consequences. The two big exception categories they identified were use of the private car, and – you’ve guessed it – foreign travel. The psychology at work here isn’t hard to understand - I’ve worked hard for the last 50 weeks and I’ve done my best to recycle all I can, avoid waste, reduce my energy usage, purchase sustainable products and choose green travel options. I definitely deserve a holiday and some sunshine !

Two years ago Ken and his wife Sue hit upon a novel solution to this problem. They decided to have a foreign holiday at home. This was sparked off by their teenage children deciding they were now too embarrassing to travel with, but then developed into the idea of ‘Why don’t we do all the things that we usually do when on holiday in Brittany, but do them at home ?’. So for a week they only did the minimum level of domestic chores which they would do when in France. They cycled down to Cardiff’s Riverside market and loaded their bikes with produce from the French baker who has a stall there. They cycled up to Caerphilly and pretended the castle there was a quaint chateau. They bought French food and wine from their local supermarkets, watched French movies on TV in the evenings and read the sort of books they’d normally read on holiday. The interesting thing was that once the ‘game’ of having a pretend French holiday began, it became an increasingly fun and funny exercise in itself. So perhaps there is a way to have some of the benefits of a foreign holiday without the hefty ecological footprint (and bill for travel and accommodation) that goes with it. All you need is a little bit of imagination – and probably some luck with the weather too!

Would the planet be saved if we all stayed at home ? Probably not, the dependence of many financially poor but ecologically rich nations on tourism income makes it more complicated than that. If no tourists arrived the likely consequence would be the liquidation of their ecological resources in pursuit of an alternative source of short-term earnings. Whether or not tourism is the largest industry in the World, or one of the five largest depends a bit on who you listen to, whether you believe it is a single industry and how you classify it. Either way, it is too large a chunk of the global economy to simply abandon without severe social and environmental repercussions. The challenge for the future will be for tourists and tourism providers to find more sustainable ways of satisfying our need to get away from it all.

Happy Holidays from Frank and Ken.