SUSTAINABLE AND RESPONSIBLE TRAVEL: WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?

Confused about the difference between sustainable travel and responsible travel? You’re not alone.If you’re trying to travel more ethically but feel overwhelmed by all the terminology, it can be hard to know what actually matters.After years of travelling with a focus on making more eco-conscious choices, we ran into the same confusion. So in this guide, we’re breaking down the key differences between sustainable and responsible travel with real examples, so you can make more informed, planet-friendly decisions on your trips.

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What is Sustainable Travel?

‘Tourism that takes full account of its current and future economic, social and environmental impacts, addressing the needs of visitors, the industry, the environment and host communities’.

The UN Environment Program and UN World Tourism Organisation (UNEP).

Naturally, Sustainable Tourism has both negative and positive impacts for destinations which we’ve outlined below (not an exhaustive list by any means:

Positive impacts:

• Protection of the environment including protecting endangered species of wildlife, minimising waste and opting for renewable energy.
• The creation of jobs, supporting small local businesses and ensures money is kept within a circular economy and goes back into the community.
• Respect for local culture, traditions and heritage is strengthened to maintain a destinations identity as opposed to allowing it to be lessened.
• The opportunity for educational and respectful relationships between locals and tourists.
• Significant investments in infrastructure can inporove destinations both for the locals as well as tourism.

Negative Impacts:

• Overtourism is a huge problem with popular sustainable destination and leads to overcrowding, excess traffic, noise, and light leading to the local culture becoming skewed for tourists’ consumption.
• With the popularity of a destination can also mean high costs of living as well as housing for the local communities, particularly in the case of large hotel companies.
• An influx of visitors has a big impact on the environment such as plastic waste pollution, erosion (walking trails or coastlines with respect to cruises).
• The demand for water, food, energy can places huge burden on local resources.
• It’s possible that Greenewashing is pretty common with tour operators and agents using the term, ‘sustainable’ without following through and implementing eco-friendly practices.

The 3 Pillars of Sustainability

Sustainability in tourism can be categorised into the three following pillars; lets take a deeper dive into what each pillar involves.

1. The Environmental Pillar

The focus is on reducing negative effects on the environment and wildlife. This covers keeping the Carbon footprint as low as possible from flying, using water carefully, not leaving plastic waste, causing no harm to the flora and fauna and leaving the environment undisturbed.

As eco conscious travellers, one of the most simple positive effects we can have is by carrying reusable bags, bottles, cutlery etc. We can look for hotels and restaurants, which recycle and are built from sustainable materials. We can research wildlife tourism to seek out ethical responsible tour operators not exploiting animal experiences.

2. The Social Pillar

Here we focus on how sustainability impacts local people and communities, supporting local businesses who employ local people. Think protecting heritage sites, respecting indigenous cultures, preventing over-tourism, disovering community projects that tourists can take part in and support non profit organisation that operate independently from government support (NGO’s).

Responsible travellers can look for opportunities to be involved in these types of projects and be aware of those businesses that are employing locally, whether they’re fairly paid and take into account whether their working environment is safe to mention a few.

3. The Economic Pillar

As sustainable-focus tourists, we can choose to part with our money for positive contributions to the local economy, such as choosing to stay in a locally owned and run hotel, guest house or even homestay, dine at restaurants owned by local families and scoping out local guides and tours agents. 

Examples of Sustainable Tourism

This leans itself onto the structure of tourism and how it is built into it rather than focussing on how individuals may travel.

Limiting Visitor Numbers

A destination that caps its numbers of tourists a day to help prevent environmental degradation 

Hotels that use renewal energy, limit the amount of water they consume. A great example Maya Bay in Thailand, a places where they filmed scenes from the movie, The Beach with Leonardo di Caprio. It suffered over tourism and now daily visitors are capped to around 300-385 at a time in an per hour shift pattern with a totally daily cap, especially in peak season. 

Building Regulations

Certain coastal destinations around the world, have strict building regulations to protect coral reefs or other coastal towns such as Sidi Bou Said in Tunisia where buildings are restricted to two floors. The blue and white aesthetic is also protected as part of its historical charm, making sure the towns white washed houses and studded blue doors remain as they have done for hundreds of years preserving heritage and cultural identity. Kerala in India is one of the most sustainable state sin the country due to it’s strong government backing and policies

Hotel Responsibilities

Eco-hotels should be using renewable energy, limiting their consumption of water as well as treating waste water effectively by Membrane Bioreactors (MBR), Sequencing Batch Reactors (SBR), or nature-based solutions like constructed wetlands. These systems are put in place to conserve water and to recycle waste water into high-quality water for landscape irrigation, cooling, or toilet flushing.

What is Responsible Tourism?

‘The behaviour of travellers aspiring to make choices on their trip according to sustainable tourism practices’.

Responsible travel as defined by the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC).

Responsible travel is about how as an individual can minimise the harm and maximise benefits through their own personal actions when traveling. It does not rely on systems or policies but on the core principles below.

The Core Principles of Responsible Travel

• Respecting the local culture by dressing appropriately, taking time to learn and celebrate the local culture as well as observing that photography is not always welcome and asking for consent. Learning to accept that ‘no’ is an answer you have to expect and respect.
• Supporting the local economy by means of opting to choose local guides and small family run or local accommodation like boutique hotels, guesthouses and home stays. Being mindful and purchasing souvenirs made by local artisans.
• Reducing the impact on the local environment by not using single-use plastic (water bottles, plastic bag) conserving water and energy at accommodation like not changing linens and towel daily as well as choosing ethical wildlife experiences.

Examples of Responsible Tourism

Based on our personal travels where the impact of tourism comes directly from the personal choices we make rather than the destination itself, which may not itself be sustainable.

Taking Direct Flights Where Available

Where possible we tend to opt for direct flights, not just because it’s convenient but also because taking off and landing emits a large proportion of a planes carbon emissions.

Walk as Much as possible 

We do enjoy private eco-friendly travel, however to offset this as much as possible, we ensure we walk or take public transport such as buses, overground and underground trains right beside locals, ensuring emissions can be kept as low as possible.

Ask The Hotel About Their Sustainability Policy & Charter

As most of you know we love a remote eco-lodge and some of our favourites have been in Costa Rica, Namibia, Thailand and Guatemala. These all had well-established sustainability initiatives, which were  based on employing local staff, use of solar panels, food grown on site and recycling to mention but a few.

Additionally when researching accommodation, we always make it a point to ask the management to share their sustainability policy and ask if we can meet with the sustainability representative and see first hand what they are doing.

L-R: HOTEL SUSTAINABILITY POLICY & HOTEL KITCHEN GARDEN IN HUA HIN, THAILAND

Locally Owned Accommodation 

Based on our own personal travels, we focus on visiting developing countries and staying in locally owned guesthouses, like Dar Said in Sidi Bou Said, Tunisia. We opt for these where possible instead of international hotel chains, where money is unlikely to go back into the local community. It’s estimated that around 90% of money made through tourism in destinations often leaves the country.

Taking Your Own Products & Slippers

We all love using the toiletteries in hotels as they feel special but in reality there is no need for them. It’s easy to take your own. Most of the minis come in small plastic bottle which are discarded. When it comes to soap, each bar of soap that is left half-used in the hotel room has to be discarded. The same goes for slippers. Do we really need them? After your visit the slippers are usually discarded for hygiene purposes adding to landfill.

It’s a good idea to ask your hotel about these things and see how and if they recycle these items. For example do they adopt large glass bottles, instead of plastic drinking bottles, that are filled in-house that you can use during your stay.

Ethical Animal Experiences

This one is very close to my heart and I cannot stress the importance of researching animal experiences enough. Elephant rides are a big NO, posing with tigers for drugged selfies is NOT OK and neither is swimming with dolphins, watching killer whales or monkeys do tricks. Choosing ethical travel experiences including wildlife requires a lot of research and if things don’t look right, then it’s best to decline!

Volunteering In Community Projects

We tend to ask our accommodation  if they work with or support local NGOS that we can spend some time volunteering with and giving back. Additionally we do our own research for volunteering opportunities just so we know our time, money and resources are actually going to a good cause/charity that will see positive results from our work. On some occasions volunteering can do more long term harm to certain organisations like schools, where you’re just popping into for a day or so opting for something like beach clean-ups, animal conservation initiatives are a much more sustainable option.

Support Local Restaurants

We’re keen to head to eateries off the tourist path, often run by locals and support their small businesses as opposed to have multiple meals at our hotel. This is one of the reasons why we choose never to go All Inclusive. Apart from the crazy food wastage, supporting the local restaurant means locally eating sourced ingredients as well as sampling more traditional authentic dishes. Additionally we know many people have misconceptions about eating street food, but it is worth giving local markets a go with raw produce as well as cooked. Just be careful with how the food is prepared as occasionally you will see them using unfiltered water, not always the best for visitors as we’re not used to this.

VEGAN CAFES IN LANGKAWI (L-R: PEGAGA CAFE & THE FAT FROG)

Buy Souvenirs From Local Artisans

We rarely purchase souvenirs, however when I do, I like to buy them from authentic artisans and purchase unique hand crafted items produced in the country you’re visiting. Be wary of imported imitations mass produced in a factory.

FEMALE-LED ARTISANS: FEMALE-LED POTTERS IN LOMBOK, INDONESIA

Book Tours & Activities Through Local Guides

Additionally one of my stand out experiences in Costa Rica’s Gulfo Dolce on the Osa Peninsula was spending the day with a local fisherman, Ronnie. His family had fished through the generations and we really felt like we were having a day out fishing, scoping out dolphins and he also showed us where they filmed Jurassic park! The interaction with a local was invaluable and we were actually contributing directly to Ronnie and his family. The El Remanso Lodge where we were staying organised this for us.

What Are The Differences Between Sustainable & Responsible Travel?

The table below is a user-friendly, quick snapshot representation of how both sustainable and responsible travel differ. Both are very important players in tourism where sustainable tourism relies on how it’s designed and responsible travel is about how you choose to travel.

Sustainable Travel	Responsible Travel
Looks to the implementation of long-term systems being introduced and infrastructure of destination	Solely down to the choices of individual travellers.
Responsibility is placed on the destination government working with tourism boards and associated businesses.	Individual travellers chose where to go, stay, eat, tour operators.
Time scale this type of tourism is most definitely long-term and therefore requires longer to put infrastructure and policies into action.	Immediate actions as traveller dependent.
Relies on and is driven by policies and strategies including multiple businesses	Primarily personal and ethical choices based.
Examples include: resorts and eco-lodges gaining eco-friendly accreditations as well as renewable energy infracstructure.	Examples include opting for local transport already in place, reducing waste pollution, eating and staying local to prevent tourism leakage. Supporting small and local businesses

Table adapted from PEDIAA.COM

Why Does Sustainable and Responsible Travel Matter?

A destination can say that it’s pretty sustainable but if tourists act irresponsibly then this would cause a negative impact. But on the flip side, the most responsible travelers can’t do everything especially if tourism is managed badly.

Positive impact at a destination relies on sustainable robust systems that support tourism coupled with responsible travellers respecting and enhancing those same systems.

How As A Traveller, You Can Combine Sustainable & Responsible Travel 

As a traveller we feel that the most impactful travel combines both sustainable and responsible travel and here how you can for your own trips:

• If you are not limited to school holidays, travel off-season, thus reducing over-tourism (sustainable).
• Research and support destinations which have placed importance on conservation policies, present and future charters (sustainable).
• Respect and learn about the local culture and traditions of other cultures (Responsible).
• Avoid any kind of unethical wildlife experience such as hands-on activities, animal selfies, riding elephants camels, donkeys including shows that involve monkeys, elephants, dolphins, whales etc. (Responsible).
• Reduce taking flights at a destination, instead take public transport or the trains where possible (Responsible).

Case Study: Combined Sustainable and Responsible Travel

Think of the Ongava Game Reserve in Namibia, we stayed here during our road trip through Namibia. It limits the amount of visitors by restricting access to guests that stay in its lodges by capping game drive vehicle capacity to six guests. The accommodation is limited to a small number of tented and room category accommodation to ensure a more personal experience. The fees helps the reserve focus on conservation and enables employment of local staff (this is sustainable travel). When you visit the Ongava Reserve, the expectation is that even on the trails around the lodges, you stay on, respect the wildlife by not getting too close and using hides or taking guide-led game drives or local guides for experiences outside of the reserve as well as not littering, not using single-use plastics. (This is responsible travel).

This kind of travel experience benefits nature, people as well as future travellers.

Myths About  Sustainable & Responsible Travel 

1. Responsible Travel is Expensive – supporting local businesses and staying at locally owned hotels is often a lot less than mass chains as their overheads are much lower.
2. Sustainable travel is solely about the environment – as we’ve shown with the pillars that make up sustainable travel, it also includes social and economic factors.
3. Just you alone can’t contribute much – tourism is a business and based on supply and demand like any other business so collective responsible choices can most definitely make an impact.

Sustainable Travel Vs Responsible Travel Round-Up

Although Sustainable travel and responsible travel are two different entities, they play complimentary roles in tourism.  Sustainable travel focuses on building tourism systems that last, while responsible travel emphasises individual accountability and ethical choices.

To travel better, we must think beyond convenience and cost. By supporting sustainable tourism initiatives and practicing responsible travel behaviors, we can protect destinations, empower communities, and ensure that travel remains a force for good.

The future of travel depends not just on where we go but also on how and why we go there.

Start your journey towards sustainable and responsible travel today because every small action helps protect the world we love to explore.

Next Steps

Why not read one of my sustainable destination itineraries which includes Langkawi, Tunisia Hotels, Washington DC, Kerala, Houston to mention a few or head to my section on hotels if you love eco-friendly accommodation options. Don’t forget to check out my vegetarian foodie guides!

For a round up of my latest posts, offers, insider gossip, sign up to my newsletter, Be-in-the Know and become an exclusive Be-Collective Insider, where you can download my sustainable travel guides and checklists.

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• 10 luxury eco-hotels and their sustainability policies
• Vegan & Vegetarian Food in Langkawi, Malaysia

Resouces To help You Plan Your Travels

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