Sustainability Communications for Tourism and Travel

Steer clear of words such as ‘sustainable,’ ‘eco,’ ‘responsible,’ and ‘regenerative’ in your marketing messages entirely. These terms can be interpreted differently by different people, and do not provide a clear enough description of your activities to influence customer behavior. 

Travellers are more likely to connect with your brand through a story that explains the benefits of your sustainability efforts, rather than just seeing the word ‘sustainable’.

An effective way to promote your organisation’s sustainable practices is to share specific examples or statistics that demonstrate the tangible impact of your business practices. For instance, instead of stating ‘our hotel rooms are water efficient,’ share a story that shows how many litres of water per room your guests helped you save, and what this means for your region, the local community and the environment.

By showcasing the specific results of your sustainability efforts rather than just listing each action, you create a favourable connection with your brand and help guests understand how they can make a positive contribution to the world simply by choosing your business.

When we work in sustainability and tourism, we often forget that the language and terminology we use with our peers and other tourism industry professionals is very different to the language that our customers understand and relate to.  

While you may often use an academic or professional tone to explain your sustainability practices internally, consider conveying this in a simpler, more accessible and engaging way when speaking with guests, both in person and in your written communications. 

A great way to achieve this is through storytelling. Describe experiences using a conversational tone and in less formal language that appeals to a broader audience of travellers. Combine this with real-life examples and images of the people and places that your organisation has worked with and helped in some way in a storytelling format to better illustrate your efforts in action.

Avoid industry jargon, slang and long words that your readers may not understand. Write clearly and use compelling language and images to inspire the reader to learn more about your destination or experience. When you write, take your readers on a journey to help them imagine already staying in your hotel, experiencing one of your tours or driving through your region. Re-emphasise this by explaining the added benefits and advantages of choosing the more sustainable option you are offering—without saying it’s sustainable, of course, as it’s best to focus on the impact.

A combination of written, audio and visual content, is the best way to connect with a variety of audiences who absorb information in different ways. Capture their attention and get creative with your storytelling by using these different types of content to engage with readers in different ways.  

Use blog posts and case studies to share information about your organisation’s partnerships, impacts and sustainability projects in a more personalised way. Social media can also help you reach a wider audience and promote your sustainable practices through images, videos, and short, easily accessible messages. 

The way you visually showcase your brand can influence the viewer’s emotions and inform decision making. Original videos and photos specifically styled for your brand can be used to present your sustainable practices in dynamic, engaging and more memorable ways. 

Infographics are also an effective way to present complex information about sustainable tourism in a simple and easy-to-understand format. They are shareable and can be included within blog articles and social media posts.

By using a combination of these content types, you can effectively communicate the benefits of sustainable tourism whilst sharing your brand story and how your sustainability efforts support everyone involved. 

Engaging customers in sustainable travel activities during their trip will help them understand the importance of travelling more sustainably, while enhancing their travel experience. By showing them how to adopt sustainable habits whilst capturing behind the scenes content, you can show how your guests contribute to sustainability for your future marketing purposes.  

Make it easy for your guests to directly promote your sustainability efforts by providing them with hashtags and social media profile tags, which they can be encouraged to use in their own posts and stories! 

Your ultimate goal should be to inspire your customers to learn how to make sustainable choices during their trips to create an ongoing ripple effect that leads to more responsible tourism practices across the tourism sector.

As a tourism professional, it’s important to remember that travellers are seeking out authentic experiences that allow them to connect with a destination in meaningful ways. To leverage this knowledge, include messages that build a deep connection with place as a content pillar in your communications strategy. This will result in a more emotive and in-depth response to the destination through your marketing efforts and storytelling. 

Sharing information about a destination’s environmental, societal, and economic challenges also helps visitors to understand how your sustainability efforts contribute to solving them.  

For example, addressing economic leakage is vitally important to promote sustainable tourism and build strong connections with the local community. By highlighting this, you can describe the impact your organisation is creating by choosing to work with local partners, suppliers, farmers and transport companies. You can also explain exactly what keeping tourism dollars within the local community means for local businesses. 

When you offer tourism experiences that reflect a destination’s heritage and cultural significance, use your marketing communications to also educate guests about First Nations people, traditions and culture. This helps visitors to develop a deep respect for and a true appreciation of the destination and its people, while enhancing their experience.

More than just a badge in the footer of a website, an eco or sustainability label confirms that your organisation has been vetted by an external accreditor who deems your business to be sustainable.  

Although many travel providers, hotels and destinations undertake significant amounts of work to be independently verified as sustainable or eco-conscious, they struggle with communicating what this means and how it impacts the destination, the local community and the environment, as well as the many benefits for guests. 

Once verified, many organisations fail to share information about their sustainability credentials publicly—a huge missed opportunity to attract new customers who care about sustainability! Having verification and a communication strategy to effectively promote your sustainability efforts will give you a big advantage. A good communications strategy and targeted copywriting will make it easy for guests to differentiate your business from that of your competitors. 

Transparency about how your organisation is contributing to a more sustainable future isn’t always communicated, even if your efforts and their results are clearly articulated in your business planning and reporting documentation. But being transparent about what your practices have achieved can make the difference between potential new clients choosing what you have to offer, or going elsewhere.  

While undertaking sometimes rigorous processes required to attain sustainability accreditation, verification or certification, organisations often review and update their business model and business practices to strengthen their commitment to more sustainable outcomes. However, while these changes often result in significant flow-on effects for guests, employees, local communities, local service providers, local economies, local culture preservation and environmental conservation, they are not always communicated to potential customers. Summarising this information into clear and easily understandable marketing messages means possible new clients are left in no doubt as to what you have achieved and what you plan to achieve.

By publishing and regularly updating information that clearly communicates your sustainability practices, targets and achievements, you build trust and credibility in your brand and offer potential new customers insight into your mission, vision and values. When your targets aren’t met, use this as an opportunity to share insights into what happened and how your business is planning to achieve them in the coming 12 months. People appreciate transparency and honesty, so this will work in your favour.

With such a high percentage of travellers now seeking out values-aligned organisations, easy access to this information on your website and social media platforms is imperative in helping them make the right choices, and selecting your business over a competitor.  

Every small step towards sustainability counts, and as a tourism professional, you have the power to drive positive change. 

We all have an important role to play in educating and raising awareness about sustainability in tourism. While it may seem daunting to take on the responsibility of being a sustainability ambassador, remember that you don’t need to have all the answers right away. Simply sharing information about the benefits of responsible tourism with your employees and customers will go a long way towards creating awareness and longer term consumer demand for more sustainable options. 

Each destination is unique and all places have individual issues. It’s important to inform visitors about these, including an explanation showing how your organisation is directly addressing environmental, economic, cultural and community challenges with solutions. 

Focus on the ‘why’ and provide concrete examples of how your business is making a positive impact. Over time, as you continue to learn and implement sustainable initiatives within your business, your knowledge base and advocacy role will become stronger and more effective.