Recent Release | 24 Oct 2023

Environmental and social footprint of travel and tourism

Economic Consulting Team

Oxford Economics

Working with WTTC and the Sustainable Tourism Global Centre, our study provides the first ever assessment of the environmental and social footprint of the travel and tourism sector. In doing so, we establish a means of tracking the sector’s progress in reducing its environmental footprint, while helping countries achieve social development goals.

By exploring the sector’s operations in 185 countries and territories, we assess how travel and tourism supports activity throughout these economies and triggers supply chains that span the world. Through this, we are able to quantify the levels of greenhouse gas emissions, water and energy usage (as well as many other metrics) that are attributable to the sector.

Similarly, we are able to explore how the activity of travel and tourism supports employment at different ends of the age and wage profile, and often with a different gender composition to the labour market as a whole. By doing so, the sector helps countries achieve UN Sustainable Development Goals.

The experts behind the research

Our Economic Consulting team are world leaders in quantitative economic analysis, working with clients around the globe and across sectors to build models, forecast markets and evaluate interventions using state-of-the art techniques. Lead consultants on this project were:

Jake Kuyer
Jake Kuyer

Associate Director

Sarah Nelson

Senior Economist

Osman Ismail

Associate Director

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