Identification of sustainable transportation alternatives for tourism in Europe

Abstract

The purpose of this research assignment is to identify sustainable transportation alternatives for tourists in Europe since both the tourism and transportation sector need to limit their environmental impact. With the aim to explore how air, car and rail travel affect carbon footprint and the experienced quality in terms of time and cost, this report highlights the trade-off tourists must make to travel in a sustainable way. The methodology was designed with a tourist based approach focusing on real world scenarios where data was collected from online carbon footprint calculators, market leading booking websites and European datasets. Both a short-term and long-term perspective was included in the study to capture changes in time duration and cost with respect to the timeframe. Moreover, a benchmarking analysis was conducted to deepen the understanding for the context that tourists find themselves in while choosing transportation alternative. The findings reveal that rail travel causes the significantly lowest carbon footprint making it a sustainable alternative. However, the prolonged travel time and uncompetitive prices affect the experienced quality. The result indicate that a single sustainable travel alternative does currently not exist for tourists who want to freely plan their travels, instead it depends on the availability for the destination. The concluding recommendations focus on further standardization of carbon footprint calculators to empower the decision process for tourists. It also suggests that rail travel should be prioritized when possible and combined with air and car alternatives when needed, to aim for a sustainable travel with expected quality.

Incoming