Last Updated on September 5, 2024 by Audrey Scott

Active communication should be an integral part of any sustainable tourism journey, yet it is often seen as an after thought. Sharing your sustainability story — initiatives, achievements, challenges, and impact — in a way that is easy to understand and resonates with travelers, trade partners and other stakeholders not only highlights your accomplishments, but it also helps engage others in this journey. This engagement can help raise awareness of sustainable tourism practices and change behaviors in others, thereby expanding the impacts of your work.

I was recently asked to contribute some tips on how to do this for a sustainable tourism training program. Below are a few practical ways to tell your sustainability story to avoid jargon and incorporate storytelling that also highlights the local context, strengths and challenges.

1. Start your sustainability story with why you decided to start this journey or certification process in the first place.

Why was this important to you, even if it might be difficult and messy at times? Why did you care enough to do this? What were the underlying values or motivations behind choosing to operate more sustainably? What big change did you want to create or what impact did you want to make? And for whom or for where (e.g., location or natural environment)?  

Be transparent if your motivations changed as you get started. For example, I was recently speaking with a guest house owner who shared that when she first started the training for sustainability certification she did so because she thought it was a trend and something she should do to meet traveler demands. However, after attending the training, those motivations moved way down the list as she understood better the underlying values of sustainability and realized for herself the need to do more now to preserve for future generations. And how she could contribute to that by operating more sustainably.

2. Provide local context when sharing your sustainability activities and stories.

Don’t only provide a list of sustainability initiatives of what you did, but also explain why these specific initiatives are so important to you, your community or surrounding environment and the impact of these initiatives.

Your audience may not know the local context to understand the importance of these activities locally as their home context might be different. For example, in a fragile high desert environment activities around conserving water take on higher importance. Or how the impact of providing economic opportunities in remote areas can help prevent migration of young people to cities or to foreign countries.  

3. Don’t be vague when describing the impact or change as a result of your sustainability activities.

This can be interpreted as greenwashing or trying to hide something, and it doesn’t support the greater transparency we need to advance sustainability as the default. An important part of sustainable tourism is measuring and monitoring, so use that information to provide tangible results whenever possible.

For example, don’t just say “reduction in water use” but give the average percentage or liters of reduced water use over a period of time. Or instead of “increased employment”, specify the number of local people who now have a sustainable livelihood from tourism thanks to your company’s activities.

4. Remember that sustainability is not only about the environment.

Some environmental or carbon reduction initiatives might feel more tangible and therefore, easier to talk about. However, be sure to tell stories as well about the activities and impacts related to local people, economy, and that also highlights the specific local context.

One way to highlight the socio-economic elements of sustainability is to think of one person impacted through your sustainable tourism initiatives. Tell that person’s story of what changed — individually, for the family, for the community, etc — and use their name (with permission, of course). This makes a story personal, relatable and the impact feels real.

5. Tell stories of your challenges – and what you learned from them — as well as your successes.

This type of transparency  and honesty earns trust, combats greenwashing and helps others learn from your journey. Sustainability is messy and sometimes doesn’t always work out as you had hoped.

Share not only your challenges or mistakes, but most importantly what lessons you learned from the experience and what you plan to do in the future to try and overcome these challenges. Keep sharing updates as you make progress and find new solutions to address these issues. Other companies or destinations may be able to learn from how you overcame obstacles, or perhaps share their own solutions to similar problems they faced.

6. Highlight how your sustainability activities actually are an experience enhancer.

Travelers sometimes think of “sustainable” or “responsible” as boring or more expensive as has been shown in different studies over the years (yes, sustainable tourism has a branding problem, but that is for another article). However, it shouldn’t be this way. Incorporating sustainability principles into your tourism product or service should improve or deepen the travel experience (if it doesn’t then you need to go back to the product development stage).

For example, don’t just list all your sustainability activities at the top of your tour description. Instead, highlight first how your tour provides a deeper or more personal connection to local people and culture…and how your sustainability initiatives to involve the local community in product development contributes to this. Or highlight how your hiking tour provides greater immersion in nature as you’ve developed new routes with fewer crowds, and have worked with local families to set up homestays. Or there is the “feel good” satisfaction for travelers of knowing that their money is staying local and having an impact in the community.

7. Invite travelers to be part of your sustainability journey, and make it easy and simple.

Don’t assume that travelers know what the “right” or more sustainable thing to do is, especially as they might not be familiar with the local context and its specific environmental and socio-economic situation. Don’t preach with a list of things only focused on what not to do. Travelers sometimes tune this out, especially as behavior science shows that their first priority on vacation to have fun and not “behave sustainably.”

Instead, provide simple and easy ways that travelers can make more sustainable decisions or adjust behaviors to advance sustainability locally. A key behavior science principle of this is to break down desired sustainable behaviors into actions that truly are easy and simple for travelers to do so it’s a friction-less choice. Then, place this communication in strategic places in order to nudge them when they are making decisions.

The post Effective Sustainable Tourism Communications: 7 Ways to Get Started appeared first on Uncornered Market.