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The Travel Foundation, Tui and PwC released the results of a groundbreaking study on the “total impact” of tourism in a destination today.
The study of eight hotels in Cyprus, hosting 60,000 TUI Group customers, used PwC’s Total Impact Measurement and Management (Timm) methodology to measure and value a range of economic, tax, environmental and social impacts.
It found the positive economic and tax benefits amounted to €84 per guest per night, far exceeding negative environmental costs of €4 and social costs of €0.2 per guest per night.
The study identified greenhouse gases as the most significant environmental cost, but found the hotels and their suppliers represented less than 0.01% of total greenhouse gas emissions in Cyprus – although the impact of flights was excluded.
It found the most significant social benefit was the ‘on the job’ experience tourism offered employees, while work placements yielded the highest social impact per person, worth an average €8,800 per student.
Travel Foundation chief executive Salli Felton said: “This pilot represents a major advance in understanding how tourism impacts on destinations and confirms that visitor numbers on their own can only tell half the story.”
Malcolm Preston, global sustainability leader at financial services and business consultancy PwC, said: “We’re delighted to have been able to support the Travel Foundation and TUI Group in applying our Open Sourced TIMM framework to this project.
“While we have applied the framework to many different industry sectors, this is the first time we have applied it to travel and tourism.”
Preston said: “The pilot study proved two key things: First, that tourism can be a force for good in a destination; and second that an in-depth analytical tool like TIMM can help companies develop strategies to improve that impact year on year.”
The report of the study is free to access on the Travel Foundation website at: thetravelfoundation.org.uk/impact