Travelling with Mrs Teodora Marinska, Chief Operational Officer and Head of Public Affairs, European Travel Commission

European Travel Commission is an association representing the national tourism organisations of Europe. Your mission is to strengthen the sustainable development of Europe as a tourist destination. How do you define sustainable development of tourism within ETC?

At ETC we look at sustainability as a journey, not the destination. It's not a topic per se. It's ever present, it's cross-cutting, it's everywhere. We should apply a sustainability lens to everything we do, all types of operations. When we zoom down to tourism, there is a very important shift in perspective of how we measure how successful our sector is.

We are trying to move away from the traditional way of seeing success in terms of growth in the arrivals or overnight stays and to look at the overall value that tourism activity adds to the destination, to the local population - from any point of view, not only economic but also social, and cultural.

From your perspective, which role transport to and from Europe and mobility within Europe play in sustainable tourism development?

“Removing the transport component will result in, tourism being most properly, reduced to leisure. Thus, mobility and connectivity are very important parts of the equation. We are conscious that tourism accounts for more than 8%[2] of the global CO2 emissions, and transportation within tourism accounts for 22%[3] of overall transport emission globally.

Transportation is both a challenge and an opportunity. Europe might seem a very successful tourism destination: if you look at the international arrivals, it is the global leader. What these statistics do not consider is that tourism impacts a relatively small part of Europe and in a very short timespan in a year. At ETC we are trying to extend the value the tourism brings, especially from a geographical point of view. We are trying to promote lesser-known places that need more tourists. From this perspective, infrastructure to remote places is extremely important. We need advancement on multimodality: how different types of transportation link to each other and cooperate to create a reliable and sustainable network.”

Growing climate and sustainability concerns require decoupling tourism growth from the tourism emission growth. At this moment, tourism emission growth is mainly determined by the aircraft emissions from the growing arrivals to Europe and the European outbound tourism. Which solution do the European Travel Commission and its members see in decoupling the tourism growth from its emission growth?

“Since our creation in 1948 ETC’s mission has always been focused on bringing more tourists from faraway markets. At this moment we are at a crossroads on how to continue doing this without harming the planet and helping our members in their regenerative tourism efforts, and of course, taking responsibility for the climate impact that tourism creates. In 2023 we launched our own Climate Action Plan, aiming at reducing ETC’s emissions by 50% in 2030 and becoming climate neutral in 2050. The Climate Action Plan focuses on how we can empower our members, the national tourism organisations of Europe, to be the climate champions in their own destinations.

The reality is that even if we stop promoting tourism today, travel will continue. People will continue traveling and especially people from the Americas, Asia and other long-haul markets will keep traveling and coming to Europe. So we are focusing on how to increase the value that these tourists bring to our destinations and how to help the industry take responsibility and acting to reduce its impact on the long run.

Climate change is an existential fight, and it impacts every decision we take as an organisation, in each field of our activity. For example, we are focusing on a new marketing approach of promoting Europe, which is more educational. In our campaigns we teach travellers how to travel responsibly. We are planning to launch a new campaign that will focus on four main components of sustainable travel: off-season, off the beaten track, consuming local products and experiences and travelling green.

Our research has a strong focus on how we can measure tourism differently, including KPIs on, for example, residents’ satisfaction with tourism activity or the environmental health of destinations.

Within our advocacy agenda we are working with policymakers to support the decarbonisation of aviation: through the plans that the industry already has put in place, boosting investment in sustainable aviation fuels and alternative technologies that are supposed to reduce the impact of aviation on the long run. And last but not least, we have largely expanded our cooperation with rail operators focusing more on rail tourism.”

In 2020 Eurail and European Travel Commission took the lead and launched a research project that explores possible future scenarios for international rail travel in Europe, highlighting the importance of cooperation between railways and tourism destinations. Several years later, which trends do you observe in tourism rail travel to Europe and within Europe?

“There is an increased consciousness among travellers and, therefore, we do see more tourists on trains. We have also seen the revival of long forgotten products and services that focus on the tourist: the night trains or the rail holiday offers. We see an increased number of private companies who are helping travellers book their cross-border train journeys and are pushing to get more people in trains. It's all quite promising.”

Above-mentioned research suggested four possible scenarios for the development of tourism rail travel in Europe, starting from the status quo scenario and gradually moving to progressively environmental activism scenarios. Do you think we are still close to the status quo scenario, or are we gradually moving to the environmental activist scenario, or is there something else going on?

“I wish I could say we were closer to the next stage, where we would see a green mobility boom with rail operators shifting their focus to leisure travellers and destinations moving their cooperation efforts towards rail. We observe these trends, but at a much slower pace than what is required by the climate emergency.

One of the short-sightedness of this report is that it relied a lot on consumer behaviour change. Travellers want to choose the green and responsible travel options. But when this is overly complex or too expensive, they just go for business as usual. Today we are aware that if we want to change the modus operandi, we need to invest in the supply side, which means transport operators and tourism businesses. We need to give tourism management bodies a prominent role of coordination, cooperation and support. We need investment in and policy support for the sustainable travel options. Once we have a sustainable alternative to the business as usual, then we should think in terms of policy that actively discourages or penalises the irresponsible behaviour.”

Who and what do we need to boost European railway tourism, and which role do you see for yourself in this process of moving forward with railway tourism?

“To advance this even further, we need to see more of a focus from the rail operators on the tourists. Rail operators are still very much focused on commuters and travel within the national borders. For tourism purposes, we need cross-border solutions that are attractive for tourism and can become more mainstream as we go.

There is a huge demand for sustainable tourism, and it creates new commercial opportunities, which could be better used both by rail operators and by tourism businesses. We should keep in mind that we still have a lot of capacity restrictions and a huge investment is needed to expand our speed rail network. This should remain a priority for the EU and the national member states in the upcoming legislative period.”

Which role can ETC and its members can play in this transition?

“Since 2021 we have a special focus on rail. We are hosting an annual award, called Rail Tourism Award[4], that showcases initiatives linking tourism and rail. The ETC Annual Assembly 2024 took place in Luxembourg and focused entirely on sustainable mobility. We are also expanding our cooperation with companies that focus on getting more tourists on trains. Eurail and Rail Europe are both our associate members. We also cooperate very well with companies like Byway and Train Line.

Best practices show Europe's great pioneering potential as the most sustainable tourism destination. For instance, in Switzerland, the Swiss Travel Pass allows any traveller to access all museums and exhibitions at once while enjoying the benefits of the Swiss train system. Switzerland Tourism invested a lot in presenting its destination as better experienced by train. This is a great cooperation example as it shows how sustainable mobility can be seamlessly incorporated.

Vienna is another great example, as it is geographically well positioned to receive tourists by train. The Vienna Tourist Board invest actively in campaigns to bring people by rail to Vienna. They did it especially in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Close by Slovakia has recently done an interesting campaign. They partnered with the Ministry of Transport and the National Railways to increase the number of Slovaks who discovered the country by train. The campaign resulted in the best summer numbers for train travel, even compared to pre-pandemic. This was in 2022, when things were still slowly recovering.

We have many examples like these that can be replicated and that are inspiring.”

Which advice do you provide to the national tourism organisations and destination management organisations to become more sustainable?

“Sustainability is ever present, and we are striving with everything we do to make tourism better for everybody: for the travellers, for the locals and for the planet. Our sustainability portfolio is growing constantly, and it includes elements from monitoring the impacts that climate change has on tourism flows in Europe to how to establish an eco-labelling scheme for the destination. Everything that we do is publicly available and can be found on our website. We recently published a climate action framework for destinations equipped with a climate action plan template. Not every destination in Europe is the same and at the same stage of their sustainability journey. We aim to tailor our materials and advice to fit the specific stage of the process you are currently in.”

Are eco-efficiency indicators part of this framework, and do you think this can be a way forward to make informed decisions for the European destinations and destination Europe?

“Some of our members are already working with eco-efficiency indicators. This is very much in the initial stage, but there is a lot of discussion about it. We are usually talking about linking the carbon footprint of a traveller from a certain source market to the value they add to the destination. Value is usually expressed in terms of expenditure. Combined, it leads us to the assessment of the eco-efficiency. When we look at long-haul markets, this becomes increasingly complex because when people come from China or from Brazil, they rarely stay in one country. They cross multiple borders while in Europe.

At the ETC level, we are endeavouring to monitor the value or impact these travellers contribute throughout their European journey and to comprehend their inter-European travel patterns. How do we make sure that they move sustainably within Europe? How do we calculate their impact or this eco-efficiency index based on their journey, not only on the three days they might spend in the destination where they land? We are working on answering these questions, which will become more relevant in the future.”

What is your vision on the future of tourism mobility?

“I'm cautiously optimistic. We are on the right path. We just need to move faster. We need to speed up. We might be losing momentum already, so that's quite important. In Europe, tourism suffered a lot in recent years. First, it was the pandemic. Then, due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the connectivity suffered a lot and we still see uneven recovery across the European continent. Today we have a lot of climate-related concerns, that are growing in importance. We speak to potential travellers and consumers, and we know that they see climate change as a big threat to how their holidays will unfold. From the tourism business perspective, it's challenging to keep the focus on sustainability when you are almost constantly operating in crisis management mode.

Nevertheless, we see the focus is still there, and we know it's the only way forward. The only way forward to resilience is to be sustainable. There's no other way. We should be conscious. Europe is leading the world in this regard. We also must show how we can do this, how we can be successful, and how we can be profitable and sustainable at the same time.”

[1]Inbound tourism in Europe - statistics & facts | Statista

[2] Ya-Yen Sun et al., 2024 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-54582-7?utm_source=rct_congratemailt&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=oa_20241210&utm_content=10.1038/s41467-024-54582-7

[3] UN Tourism, 2019. https://www.e-unwto.org/doi/book/10.18111/9789284416660

[4]https://railtourismawards.com/