Recent Release | 24 Oct 2023

Environmental and social footprint of travel and tourism

Economic Consulting Team

Oxford Economics

A world-first quantification of the environmental and social footprint of the global travel and tourism sector.

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

Recent related posts

Assessing the potential impacts of the GCC Unified Visa

The GCC countries have approved a unified tourism visa system which aims to boost tourism and economic diversification across the region. The new system should come into effect in 2024 or 2025 having been announced at the recent GCC meeting in Muscat.

Find Out More
Tourism organisations upbeat despite cost and staffing challenges

Our new Tourism Economics survey – Tourism Industry Monitor (TIM) – identifies optimism as industry experts expect global destinations to surpass 2019 performance in Q4 2023.

Find Out More
Europe
Higher prices not denting travel recovery in Europe

Services inflation in the Eurozone has remained persistent and within this the price of travel related items such as international flights and hotels have risen significantly this year.

Find Out More
Cruise - tourism economics
Luxury cruising, the new “Gold Rush”, growing at three times the rate of the overall industry

Luxury cruise capacity is set to nearly double by 2028, with Luxury Segment capacity on track to expand 87% compared to 2019 fuelled in part by new entrants.

Find Out More