Most Vietnamese tourists feel guilty about less sustainable travel choices: Booking.com

A majority of Vietnamese survey respondents (56%) feel guilty about less sustainable travel choices and almost all of them (94%) want to travel more sustainably over the next 12 months.

These are among key insights found in the ninth edition of Booking.com's Sustainable Travel Report 2024, which covered more than 31,000 travelers across 34 countries and territories.

The report, which explores the latest consumer attitudes, priorities and influences related to sustainable travel, reveals that a sense of weariness may be emerging globally, fueled by ongoing challenges that travelers experience in making more sustainable travel choices.

Sense of disillusion

It also says that a sense of disillusion about making more sustainable travel choices may be counteracting positive intentions.

Booking.com says that 47% feel that the damage already done is irreversible and that the travel choices they make are not going to change that.

In fact, 35% don’t believe climate change is as severe as people make it out to be and 41% feel the time they spend traveling is too precious to put sustainability at the top of their decision-making list.

Not seeing sustainability in action is also contributing to the sense of powerlessness, with 46% of travelers saying being more sustainable at a destination that is not implementing sustainability practices itself feels pointless.

In this scenario, a noteworthy 80% of Vietnamese travelers say they want to leave the places they visit better than when they arrived and 43% think they can have a positive influence on the social impacts of travel.

A significant 43% also think collective efforts will be most effective in addressing economic challenges and 51% believe travel service providers hold the key to counteracting the environmentally unfriendly factors.

Therefore, collective action to ensure progress toward a more sustainable travel industry should be a priority, the report says.

It says the travel industry can ensure travelers prioritize sustainable travel habits by providing consistency of certification standards and labels.

An accommodation labeled “more sustainable” is found more appealing by 54% of the respondents.

Consistency of certification standards is critical with almost three-fourth (71%) respondents agreeing that all travel booking sites should use the same sustainable certifications or labels. However, the number of travelers who are interested to learn more about why an accommodation is given this label is down 22 percentage points at 54% when compared with the same time last year, indicating a need for simple, clear communication that enables easy decision-making regardless of priorities, the report says.

“At Booking.com, our mission is to make it easier for everyone to experience the world, and that includes providing a platform that makes it easier to take the next important steps together on our collective journey to a more sustainable future for travel,” the report quotes Varun Grover, Vietnam country head of Booking.com, as saying.