Socio-economic and environmental cost–benefit analysis for tourism products — A prototype tool to make holidays more sustainable☆

a r t i c l e i n f o A credible socioeconomic and environmental cost–benefit tool for tourism products has been lacking, despite many significant potential values, the huge impact of tourism products worldwide, and the increasingly successful application of such tools in other sectors. This paper describes development and trial of a prototype tool for holiday products that could determine the circumstances in which overall benefits of tourism outweigh burdens. Use of the prototype tool indicates that many current flight-based holiday products may have a net negative impact , but significant positive difference could be achieved through choosing shorter-haul or flight-free holidays, hotels with less leakage from the local economy and less non-recycled waste, and fewer but longer holidays with increasing daily discretionary spend. Further development could produce a robust cost–benefit tool for tourism products that could help the industry with 'choice editing' and identifying sustainability issues requiring closer attention. Tourism, the world's largest service sector industry directly employing 98 million people globally and indirectly supporting a further 157 million jobs (WTTC, 2012), can bring not only great environmental, social and economic benefits but also great costs. For example, in 2010 in the Caribbean the economic impact from travel and tourism equalled 14% of GDP, 13% of employment, 12% of investment and 17% of exports (WTTC, 2011). However most overseas tourist visits in the region are by cruise ships, with the cruise industry arguably having a poor record on worker rights and significant environmental impacts, often leaving waste and pollution behind and sometimes culturally overwhelming smaller destinations. Moreover over 20% of tourist arrivals to the Caribbean are from Europe, requiring long-haul flights that may result per passenger in more than a sustainable annual individual allocation of greenhouse gas emissions. So which are greater, the costs or the benefits, in general or in any given holiday product? Is the industry in a position to say – taking all impacts into account wherever they occur – which holiday has the greatest net positive or negative impact: three weeks in a three-star half-board hotel in the Caribbean, two weeks in an all-inclusive five-star hotel in Spain, or a week self-catering in Cyprus? Such questions get right to the heart of the ongoing debate about 'sustainable tourism'. Indeed, being able to answer questions about the relative sustainability of its products is a critically important part of the tourism industry taking 'sustainable …