BBC 100 Women 2023 (UK)
And here, I think, she has hit on a crucial thing. Just as brands are expected to do the right thing, so too, she says, we should expect customers to do the right thing by understanding their own carbon profile – carbon-tracker and carbon stakeholders instead of calorie-tracker, anybody? And we should proactively manage them personally, and engage with brands doing the same, so that overall carbon footprints can be measured and management advice offered accordingly. ‘It’s about the radical collaboration of sharing information and learning from each other because then we can really work to implement more sustainable travel practices.’
With that in mind, Intrepid has managed to publish detailed carbon labelling for over 500 trips between 2022 and 2023, but as Etti says, it is a laborious process where, to be accurate, you have to consider every tiny detail of the tour – from how you travel and what and how you cook when you get there, to the carbon labour costs of delivering on those many experiences and encounters that make up any travel adventure.
But as Intrepid’s recent report, A Sustainable Future for Travel, flags up, once you begin to measure and mitigate these things, the future isn’t just brighter, it’s different, as we consider the rebooting and rise of less damaging modes of travel (the return of high- speed sleepers, low-orbital Arctic airships, electric jets, hydrogen-fuelled ships), or even more inclusive ways of defining travel as we consider the why as well as the how.
Hence, choosing a destination because of its people rather than its hotels, seeking out ephemeral ‘no-impact’ escapes where off-grid concepts like CABN embrace a ‘no-trace’ mindset, or the growth of regenerative destinations such as Albania and Costa Rica, where resources are managed in tandem with tourist numbers, and their expectations and requirements.
But this, as Etti says in the report, which was created in association with The Future Laboratory’s Foresight team, can’t be a brand-only initiative. ‘We must recognise that the future will be different from business as usual, and that the climate crisis is not a competitive advantage. We must align, collaborate and accelerate collective action and innovation to decarbonise travel, as only then can our industry truly achieve its huge potential sustainable development.’
You can listen to the full interview with Dr Susanne Etti here, or download a copy of Intrepid’s A Sustainable Future for Travel from here.
