Measuring EU Tourism Environmental Impacts. Setting the frame.

One of the main difficulties that the tourism industry faces today is the lack of proper standard measurements of their environmental impact – whether negative or positive. This lack of common metrics hampers comparison at the EU and international level. Furthermore, if we do not know what impacts we have, how are we going to take the right actions to either reduce or boost those impacts?

This is why, the big players and alliances from the tourism industry have already taken a step forward and agreed a set of tools and methodologies to assess tourism environmental impact. Smaller tourism businesses are also adopting sustainable actions, measuring their impacts on the environment and reducing their footprint.

In this webinar, we discussed environmental indicators, and discovered what the current situation is.

We heard from researchers, who gave inputs on what we should measure, what the knowledge gaps and current difficulties are.

The European Commission provided insights into their current work on the topic, as well as their goals.

The tourism industry shared how they measure their environmental impacts, what indicators they decided to use and why.

We hope that this webinar advanced the process on identifying necessary actions and common ground at the European, national or local level towards measuring environmental impact.

This webinar has been organised by the commission expert group for tourism ecosystem T4T (Together for Tourism) which was established in June 2023 by DG Grow to assist the European Commission in the implementation of the transition pathway for tourism.

Webinar programme and presentations

Welcome and Facilitation:

Teresa Pastor, European Charter for Sustainable Tourism manager, EUROPARC Federation,  vice-chair of the T4T green subgroup;

Liisa Kokkarinen, Head of Sustainable Development at Visit Finland

Opening: Ramune Genzbigelyte-Venturi, Policy officer for Tourism, DG GROW

The Benefits and Fallacies of Measurement: Prof. Graham Miller, Nova School of Business and Economics, Portugal

What to do with the data? Dr Giovanni Finocchiaro, ISPRA – Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research

From Sustainable Tourism Standards to data: a realistic pathway: Dr Ioannis Pappas, Director Mediterranean Region at GSTC – Global Sustainable Tourism Council

Towards measuring the sustainability of tourism: Christophe Demunter, team leader tourism statistics EUROSTAT, European Commission

Measuring what matters – how TUI is tackling this in practice: Ian Corbett, Sustainability Manager – Strategy, Marketing & Engagement in TUI Group

Conclusions

Ralf Pastleitner, Head of TUI Group Corporate Office EU, Chairman of the T4T green subgroup

Get to know the speakers

Graham Miller

Professor Graham Miller holds the Instituto Rodrigo Guimarães Chair of Sustainable Business at Nova School of Business and Economics in Lisbon, Portugal, where he is also the Academic Director of the Westmont Institute of Tourism and Hospitality at Nova School of Business and Economics.

Prof. Miller has previously been the co-editor of the Journal of Sustainable Tourism, lead judge for the World Travel and Tourism Council’s Tourism for Tomorrow Awards and an appointed member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council for the Future of Sustainable Tourism. Graham was the principal investigator for the EU funded project designing the European Tourism Indicator Scheme (ETIS).

Ioannis Pappas

Dr Ioannis Pappas, Founder & CEO of GREEN EVOLUTION SA, is Director of the Mediterranean Region of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC). He is a Mechanical Engineer, with PhD in Applied Mechanics. He has over 30 years’ experience in several fields of science, focusing on Sustainability for Tourism, Energy and Environmental Efficiency in Infrastructure and Buildings. He advises on the standardization of companies and technological implementation of climate adaptation and mitigation methodologies.

Giovanni Finocchiaro

Dr Giovanni Finocchiaro is responsible for the ISPRA Statistical Office within the National Statistical System (SISTAN) and ensures the interface with EUROSTAT for environmental statistics. He participated in and coordinated European projects on ‘tourism and environment’ and on ‘environmental statistics’. He is co-chair of the Interest Group on Environment and Tourism (IGET) of the EPA Network. In his work, Giovanni focusses on environmental reporting, tourism, sustainable development, indicators and statistics.

Christophe has been working for over 25 years in several domains of official statistics, and is currently in charge of tourism statistics at Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union. Christophe holds degrees in applied economics, criminology and European law.

Ian is Head of Sustainability for TUI Group. Sustainable tourism is a key feature of its corporate culture and has been for more than 20 years. Ian works as part of the global sustainability team, with a particular focus on accelerating TUI’s shift to a more circular business model and on empowering its consumers for the green transition. Ian holds a law degree from the University of Sheffield and has worked in the tourism industry for over 25 years.

Get to know the facilitators

The webinar will be facilitated by Teresa Pastor, EUROPARC’s European Charter for Sustainable Tourism manager, as well as Liisa Kokkarinen and Ralf Pastleitner.

Liisa Kokkarinen

Liisa Kokkarinen is head of Sustainable Development at Visit Finland, and she is passionate about using tourism as a catalyst for the better. At Visit Finland she is behind Visit Finland’s Climate Action Plan and heads the national Sustainable Travel Finland program, a low threshold development programme to assist Finnish travel companies and destinations to adapt sustainable practices.

Ralf Pastleitner

Dr Ralf Pastleitner is TUI Group’s Director of International Public Policy & EU Affairs. He also heads TUI Group’s EU corporate office in Brussels, and acts as the travel group’s point of contact for the European Institutions, European Associations and EU Member States. He is a member of the Executive Committee at Airlines for Europe (A4E) and currently chairs a European Commission expert group on the green transition in travel and tourism.