Climate Change and Tourism - UNEP - Division of Technology ...

11.2 Emissions Related to Individual Holidays
UNWTO, 9 July 2008
Emissions from Tourism: Status and Trends
Section 11.1.5 has shown that CO 2 emissions from tourism are significant, even though they may seem
to appear small in comparison to other economic sectors. Results also show that trip distance is an
important variable, with long-haul international air travel being a comparatively major contributor to
overall emissions. Given still considerable growth in tourism demand, a perspective only focused on
the global contribution of tourism to climate change may thus be misleading. As global emissions from
tourism are the sum of individual trips, a perspective on these is provided in this Section. This is of
particular importance in the context of mitigation strategies (see Chapter 12).
Emissions vary widely between trips. A fly-cruise to Antarctica, for instance, may entail emissions 1,000
times larger than those of a domestic cycling holiday. Figure 11.11 illustrates this for a number of
journeys. These figures were found by using the great circle distances for the specific trips, the average
emissions per pkm as given in Table 11.2 and the average emissions for accommodation and other
tourism activities as used for all calculations for tourists from high income economies. According to
UNWTO estimates, an average tourist trip lasts 4.15 days (for all international and domestic tourist trips
– see Annex 1) and causes emissions of 0.25 t CO 2 . * The vast majority of trips produce lower emissions,
but a small share is highly emission-intense. For instance, a 14-day holiday from Europe to Thailand
may cause emissions of 2.4 tonnes of CO 2 , and a typical fly-cruise from the Netherlands to Antarctica
produces some 9 t CO 2 . 653 Even holidays said to be eco-friendly, such as dive holidays, will cause high
emissions in the range of 1.2 to 6.8 t CO 2 (see Box 25). These figures show that emissions caused by a
single holiday can vastly exceed annual per capita emissions of the average world citizen (4.3 t CO 2 ),
or even the average EU citizen (9 t CO 2 ). However, many holidays cause comparably low emissions,
only marginally increasing overall per capita emissions. Figure 11.12 illustrates this by breaking down
annual emissions to per-day emissions for various examples of holidays. Emissions will largely depend
on the choice of transport mode, with air transport generally increasing emission levels substantially.
Other factors of importance for per day emissions are the distances travelled as well as the length of stay,
the accommodation chosen or the activities carried out at the destination. Destination choice has thus
a considerable impact on the ecological impact of various journeys. 654
Figure 11.11 Annual per capita CO 2 emissions and emissions caused by various journeys (emission
factors as for 2005 technology)
Global/capita/year
EU/capita/year
US/capita/year
Car Netherlands to southern France (15 d)
Rail Netherlands to the Alps (15 d)
Weekend break by air Netherlands to Barcelona (3 d)
Air Netherlands to Thailand (14 d)
Air Netherlands to Australia (21 d)
Cruise Antarctica (15 d)
Average tourist trip (4-5 d)
0 5 10 15 20 25
Total emissions per year trip (tonnes CO 2 )
* This number is found by dividing all emissions from Table 11.6 minus the emissions from same-day tourism by all tourist trips
in Table 11.3 = (1308-107) Mt / 4.75 billion).
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