The interest of Germans in sustainable travel is growing – as well as their willingness to book online. More and more digital booking platforms and online tour operators do not only offer individual service components such as overnight stays or taxi rides, but also arrange entire long-distance trips as a package. Some of them now claim to offer sustainable holiday trips. A closer look at digital tourism companies on the German market raises doubts: Does the green image primarily serve marketing or do companies truly and consistently focus on the maxims of sustainability?
Outsourcing labour and costs to local actors
As digital marketplaces, the platforms provide travellers with a tailor-made, supposedly sustainable offer. They connect tourists with local operators who then plan the trips on site or provide services such as accommodation. At first glance, they offer products like classic tour operators, but they often do not put the trips together themselves but outsource the entire coordination and service provision to the host countries. Without having to take over the time-consuming and costly intermediation of the organizer, they can offer significantly cheaper prices.
Many platforms also outsource the complex correspondence with the travellers. Of course, the correspondence with German travellers should be in German, so Germans often run local agencies or at least work there. That way the profits remain in the country, but do not reach the locals directly. Thus, the main arguments of the platforms for sustainable tourism creating direct benefits for the local population is quickly invalidated.
Online brokering services represent both an opportunity as well as a risk for companies in countries in the Global South. While they benefit from the digital solutions and the market access provided by the brokers, lopsided dependencies on the brokers as well as high commissions are the downside. Platforms such as trip.me, Evaneos and Greenpearls do not publicly disclose their commission fee. However, there are many indications that they are higher than the usual 10 to 20 percent common in the tour operator business in Germany. The consequence for the local agents: A lot of work with little added value and slim or non-transparent profit margins.
Intransparent sustainability criteria
Web-based, international tourism platforms should ensure that they develop ethical products. They can achieve this goal by selecting of sustainable services on site – e.g. by working only with local partner agencies and suppliers that are certified along the entire value chain. So far, however, most digital platforms themselves have not yet been certified and only make it partially transparent whether and according to which sustainability criteria they choose their partners. For example, Evaneos states that it selects its partners, among other things, based on whether they are certified, but does not provide any further information about the certificates or the number of certified partner companies. The Greenpearls platform has developed its own grid of criteria, but it is not clear which standards it is based on and to what extent it has been applied to the respective accommodations. For the customer, it remains unclear whether the services on site meet the criteria or not. Trip.me's partners are not selected based on sustainability criteria. According to their own website, services are checked on site for "uniqueness, adventure, excitement and much more".
Setting a good example
While many online intermediary platforms still need to make significant progress in terms of their sustainability impact, Fairaway has already made good progress. The company cooperates with partner companies in the destinations that are registered with the sustainability label Travelife or supports local partners in the certification process. On its website, Fairaway provides transparent and comprehensive information about the company's sustainable business practices and itself participated in the TourCert check. Fairaway limits the entrepreneurial risk for local partners through transparent rules of cooperation and standard market commissions of 15 percent. A code of conduct obliges local companies to observe labour, child and human rights. The tour operator also compensates for part of the CO2 emissions generated per trip and has developed measures to reduce the consumption of resources.
For the most part, digital intermediary platforms still seem to find it difficult to orient their actions consistently towards principles of sustainable tourism. But there are first signs that they are beginning to take a closer look at the complexity of sustainable tourism development. Evaneos has recently appointed a sustainability officer to the company. The increase in tour operators with digitalised business models will make it necessary to take a closer look in the future.
Felizitas Clemens holds a degree in International Studies Leisure and Tourism (M.A.). After studying and gathering first working experiences in Costa Rica, Chile and Sicilia, she wrote her master thesis on the topic of sustainabilty and digital tourism platforms.
