Driving Climate Action for Travel & Tourism

Driven by our Members and the real desire to build back better and move towards a net zero emissions future, WTTC is committed to continuing its efforts to support the sector in combatting climate change through a range of activities including advocacy, research, guidance and collaboration with an incredible network of partners and businesses.

Our climate initiatives and reports

SAF: Opportunities & Implications for Tourism Destinations

Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) provides an immediate and significant opportunity to reduce aviation GHG emissions, but the scale of transiting from fossil fuels that have served the industry for more than 100 years, to a new generation of sustainable fuels that are not made from crude oil is considerable.

To embrace the opportunities presented by SAF and address the challenges, WTTC and ICF have jointly developed this short paper which recommends tourism destinations undertake three critical actions which are to:

1. Share this paper widely with tourism partners to improve tourism stakeholder awareness and understanding of SAF.
2. Collaborate with aviation stakeholders and national travel partners to call on national governments to create a public/private task force in each country, dedicated to decarbonising transport, with working groups focussed on each mode of travel.
3. Encourage national governments to undertake a SAF Feasibility Study.

Sustainability in Numbers: Travel & Tourism in Puerto Rico

The Puerto Rico Tourism Company joined forces with WTTC and Oxford Economics to apply their ground breaking analyses of the global economic, social and environmental impacts of Travel and Tourism to Puerto Rico.

The report uses this analysis to produce an assessment of the sector in Puerto Rico, describing its social and economic importance and benchmarking its environmental performance against the wider Caribbean region and the US.

WTTC x Harvard Learning Insights: Science-Based Targets

Science-based targets are based on the concept of a global carbon budget. By accounting for the GHG emissions put into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution began, and understanding how these affect the climate, it is possible to calculate the maximal level of emissions that would enable global warming levels to remain below 2°C. Science-based targets are powerful tools that allow businesses to align themselves with the commitments made under the Paris Agreement. 

Sustainability Leadership Case Studies / Iberostar: Roadmap for Decarbonisation

This case study describes the work of Iberostar Hotels and Resorts (Iberostar) to decarbonise, so that learning to date can be shared across the Travel & Tourism sector and beyond. It provides a scalable roadmap for decarbonisation based on the success of Iberostar’s programme. If others adopt the same approach, they will help to accelerate pro-sustainability efforts to decarbonise, to mitigate climate change, and to boost climate adaptation efforts.

Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism

WTTC is a signatory of the Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism, committing to act now and accelerate climate action to cut global tourism emissions by at least a half over the next decade and reach Net Zero emissions as soon as possible before 2050.

Other key publications

As well as the above reports and initiatives some of our other key publications include:

Related events and webinars

Here are our webinars and events that are related to sustainability:

• Monitoring our Footprint and Steering Sustainable Growth
• Treading the Path to Decarbonisation
• WTTC at New York Climate Week 2023
• COP26 - Driving Climate Action: A Net Zero Roadmap for Travel and Tourism