The flaw in sustainability: Why responsible tourism avoids hard questions

Ewan Cluck­ie argues that travel & tour­is­m’s sus­tain­ab­il­ity claims have cre­ated a cred­ib­il­ity crisis, and that it is time to ask hard ques­tions about own­er­ship, gov­ernance, and incentives.

It’s a “Good Tour­ism” Insight. (You too can write a “GT” Insight.)

Sustainability: Much talk, declining trust

The travel industry talks a lot about sus­tain­ab­il­ity. We pub­lish policies, track emis­sions, cre­ate cer­ti­fic­a­tions, and pro­mote best practice.

Yet trust in sus­tain­ab­il­ity claims is declin­ing, and scru­tiny from reg­u­lat­ors, con­sumers, and part­ners is increasing.

This dis­con­nect raises an uncom­fort­able ques­tion: if we have more sus­tain­ab­il­ity frame­works than ever before, why does cred­ib­il­ity still feel so fragile?

One answer is that much of the industry’s sus­tain­ab­il­ity con­ver­sa­tion focuses on out­puts rather than inputs. We meas­ure what busi­nesses say they do, but rarely exam­ine how they are designed to behave when com­mer­cial pres­sure rises.

Sus­tain­ab­il­ity has become a mar­ket­ing func­tion rather than an oper­a­tion­al commitment.

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The limits of sustainability as it is commonly practised

Most sus­tain­ab­il­ity frame­works in tour­ism evolved from envir­on­ment­al man­age­ment sys­tems. They are built to assess activ­it­ies, policies, and metrics.

These tools are use­ful, but incom­plete. They tell us how a busi­ness oper­ates today, not wheth­er it is struc­tur­ally oblig­ated to act respons­ibly tomorrow.

When sus­tain­ab­il­ity is treated primar­ily as a set of prac­tices, it becomes vul­ner­able. Envir­on­ment­al com­mit­ments can be depri­or­it­ised. Social stand­ards can be diluted. Policies can be rewritten.

This is not because indi­vidu­als sud­denly stop caring, but because the under­ly­ing incent­ives remain unchanged. We saw this first-hand back dur­ing the pandemic.

If own­er­ship struc­tures, gov­ernance arrange­ments, and profit expect­a­tions reward short-term extrac­tion, sus­tain­ab­il­ity com­mit­ments will even­tu­ally be tested and compromised.

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The questions we tend not to ask

There are sev­er­al ques­tions that rarely sit at the centre of respons­ible tour­ism discussions:

• Who owns the busi­ness, and where are stra­tegic decisions made? 
• Who ulti­mately bene­fits when the busi­ness succeeds? 
• How are profits dis­trib­uted, and where do they flow?
• What hap­pens to sus­tain­ab­il­ity com­mit­ments when mar­gins tight­en or share­hold­ers push for growth?

These are not abstract concerns.

In many des­tin­a­tions, includ­ing across South­east Asia where I work, issues such as opaque own­er­ship struc­tures, uneven enforce­ment of labour stand­ards, and lim­ited reten­tion of tour­ism value with­in loc­al eco­nom­ies are well documented.

Yet they are often treated as sep­ar­ate from sus­tain­ab­il­ity, rather than cent­ral to it.

As a res­ult, a busi­ness can present strong envir­on­ment­al per­form­ance claims, while remain­ing struc­tur­ally mis­aligned with the long-term interests of the places it oper­ates in.

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The gap between standards and assurance

If cer­ti­fic­a­tions are to be mean­ing­ful, they must do more than assess what busi­nesses claim. They must provide assur­ance that those claims hold up under scrutiny.

In prac­tice, this often does not happen.

Some cer­ti­fic­a­tion frame­works include robust stand­ards on paper, cov­er­ing areas such as leg­al com­pli­ance, non-dis­crim­in­a­tion, and fair labour prac­tices. Yet the depth of audit­ing does not always match the breadth of the standards.

Busi­nesses may be cer­ti­fied des­pite oper­at­ing through own­er­ship arrange­ments that raise ques­tions about com­pli­ance with loc­al law. Or they may oper­ate with work­place cul­tures or tax prac­tices that would not hold up to close scru­tiny against the framework’s own criteria.

This is not neces­sar­ily a fail­ure of intent. Audits often rely on self-repor­ted inform­a­tion and declar­a­tions, and veri­fy­ing com­pli­ance with des­tin­a­tion-spe­cif­ic laws requires expert­ise and resources that many cer­ti­fic­a­tion bod­ies may not prioritise. 

But the end res­ult is the same.

When a cer­ti­fic­a­tion endorses a busi­ness that does not meet its own stated stand­ards, it lends cred­ib­il­ity to prac­tices that truly respons­ible oper­at­ors are work­ing to move beyond.

Cer­ti­fic­a­tion bod­ies also have their own struc­tur­al ten­sions at play. Those that meas­ure suc­cess by the num­ber of busi­nesses cer­ti­fied face pres­sure to grow.

But growth without rigour or integ­rity to prin­ciples dilutes value.

The industry would be bet­ter served by frame­works that pri­or­it­ise depth of assur­ance over breadth of mem­ber­ship, even if that means few­er busi­nesses qualify.

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The case for transparency

One way to address this would be great­er trans­par­ency in the cer­ti­fic­a­tion pro­cess itself.

At present, most audit out­comes remain con­fid­en­tial. Busi­nesses dis­play a badge, but stake­hold­ers have no vis­ib­il­ity into how that badge was earned, what was assessed, or what gaps may have been identified.

If the claims being cer­ti­fied are genu­ine and can with­stand pub­lic scru­tiny, there is little reas­on for this inform­a­tion to remain hidden.

Pub­lish­ing audit meth­od­o­lo­gies, find­ings, and areas of non-com­pli­ance would allow part­ners, reg­u­lat­ors, and con­sumers to make informed judge­ments rather than rely­ing on the badge alone.

Trans­par­ency also shifts incentives.

When audit out­comes are pub­lic, cer­ti­fic­a­tion bod­ies face great­er account­ab­il­ity for the rigour of their pro­cesses. Cer­ti­fied busi­nesses face great­er account­ab­il­ity for the accur­acy of their claims. And the wider industry gains a clear­er pic­ture of what cer­ti­fic­a­tion actu­ally means in practice.

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Why regulation is shifting the burden

This gap between stated stand­ards and veri­fied prac­tice is becom­ing harder to sustain.

In Europe, the Cor­por­ate Sus­tain­ab­il­ity Report­ing Dir­ect­ive and the pro­posed Green Claims Dir­ect­ive are rais­ing expect­a­tions around evid­ence, accur­acy, and accountability.

The Pack­age Travel Dir­ect­ive already places due dili­gence oblig­a­tions on organ­isers to ensure sup­pli­ers meet leg­al and con­trac­tu­al standards.

Togeth­er, these frame­works sig­nal a broad­er shift: sus­tain­ab­il­ity claims must be defens­ible, and liab­il­ity increas­ingly flows through sup­ply chains.

For travel brands and inter­me­di­ar­ies, this intro­duces new forms of risk.

Align­ing with sup­pli­ers whose sus­tain­ab­il­ity nar­rat­ives can­not with­stand scru­tiny, or whose struc­tures under­mine their stated val­ues, exposes part­ners to repu­ta­tion­al and reg­u­lat­ory con­sequences. This is true even when the mar­ket­ing lan­guage sounds reassuring.

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Moving from practices to structure

If the industry wants to rebuild trust, it may need to move bey­ond ask­ing wheth­er a busi­ness fol­lows respons­ible prac­tices, and start ask­ing wheth­er it is designed to do so.

This means pay­ing great­er atten­tion to com­pany struc­ture. Own­er­ship mod­els. Gov­ernance safe­guards. Profit dis­tri­bu­tion. Decision-mak­ing power.

These ele­ments shape beha­viour far more reli­ably than policies alone.

Some oper­at­ors are now look­ing bey­ond tra­di­tion­al sus­tain­ab­il­ity cer­ti­fic­a­tions toward veri­fic­a­tion frame­works that assess struc­ture and gov­ernance, not just claims.

The ques­tion is not wheth­er a com­pany has a sus­tain­ab­il­ity policy, but wheth­er that policy can sur­vive a change in lead­er­ship, a squeeze on mar­gins, or pres­sure from investors.

At Trip­seed, this think­ing led us to pur­sue People and Plan­et First veri­fic­a­tion, which exam­ines our organ­isa­tion­al and gov­ernance struc­tures rather than oper­a­tion­al checklists.

Being among the first travel com­pan­ies in Asia to achieve this recog­ni­tion is not an end­point. It is part of a broad­er effort to test wheth­er our com­mit­ments are genu­inely embed­ded, and to con­trib­ute to a con­ver­sa­tion about what cred­ible assur­ance might look like.

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A more honest phase of responsible tourism

Respons­ible tour­ism does not need more badges. It needs great­er hon­esty about the lim­its of exist­ing approaches, and more will­ing­ness to address the struc­tur­al drivers of impact.

This does not mean every tour­ism busi­ness must become a social enter­prise. But it does mean acknow­ledging that sus­tain­ab­il­ity without struc­tur­al account­ab­il­ity is fragile.

Cred­ib­il­ity increas­ingly depends on wheth­er respons­ib­il­ity is embed­ded into the very roots of a busi­ness rather than layered on top.

As scru­tiny grows and expect­a­tions shift, the industry faces a choice. Con­tin­ue refin­ing sus­tain­ab­il­ity nar­rat­ives that sit com­fort­ably with­in exist­ing struc­tures, or begin ask­ing harder ques­tions about how tour­ism busi­nesses are owned, gov­erned, and incentivised.

If respons­ible tour­ism is to move from prom­ise to prac­tice, it may be those harder ques­tions, not the next cer­ti­fic­a­tion, that mat­ter most.

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About the author

Ewan Cluck­ie is Chief Growth Officer at Trip­seed, a ‘People and Plan­et First-veri­fied’ social enter­prise and des­tin­a­tion man­age­ment com­pany based in Chi­ang Mai, Thai­l­and.

His work centres on “prin­cipled com­pany growth led by long-term social, eco­nom­ic, and envir­on­ment­al impact”.

Featured image (top of post)

The flaw in sus­tain­ab­il­ity: Why respons­ible tour­ism avoids the hard ques­tions. A Gem­ini-gen­er­ated image.

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