Environmental concerns and sustainability have become some of the most discussed topics in recent years, concurrently with increased awareness in society of the environmental impacts caused by humans, making environmental sustainability one of the biggest trends for 2023 and onwards.
These concerns are also carried by many travelers as sustainability influences the planning of their holiday and behavior on the destination. But who is the sustainable traveler and what kind of actions is this traveler taking to minimize the environmental impact when traveling?
To get to know more about this, we dug into the latest data from our data analysis tool Travellyze and had a look at a traveler segment consisting of Nordic travelers, who have already taken social and environmental responsibility concerning their holidays such as compensated CO2 emissions, and who furthermore find environmental concerns to be of great or extreme importance. This segment of Nordic sustainable travelers represents no less than 13.7% of the adult population, which is equivalent to 3,074,900 people.
So who is the Nordic sustainable traveler?
The Nordic sustainable traveler is most represented by what we define as the buyer persona; female, aged between 25-34 years, married or cohabiting. Almost 1 in 4 (24.6%) of the sustainable travelers have a household income between 36.000-58.999 EUR, 29.7% have a travel budget between 1.000-2.999 EUR, and close to half (48.9%) is expecting their holiday budget to be the same as last year, while 13.8% expect their holiday budget to increase.
This segment finds travel inspiration for their holidays primarily through their friends and family (51.8%), followed by search engines such as Google (43.1%), and Facebook (35.5%).
They mainly book package trip (flight + accommodation) online at travel agencies’ website (38.4%) and prefers a holiday type where they can relax and unwind (44.9%), going on a sun and beach holiday (43.8%) and tend to stay at 3-4* hotels (39.9%), budget hotels/hostels (25.7%) or staying at a holiday home (24.3%).
What kind of actions does the Nordic sustainable traveler take to minimize the environmental impact of their holiday?
The Nordic sustainable traveler takes social and environmental responsibility when going on holiday, primarily by choosing the form of transportation that emits less CO2 emissions, as two-thirds (66.7%) of these travelers have already chosen to travel by train or bus over a plane. 33.7% of this segment is also compensating for its CO2 emissions when traveling. Furthermore, 31.2% have been staying at an eco-friendly accommodation despite costing more than a regular one.
Besides their own behavior and impact on a destination, there are also several aspects of destination factors that influences this segment.
The travel factor which has the highest impact on this segment is environmental concerns and sustainability (50%) followed by:
- Cleanliness (43.3%)
- Nature/outdoor experiences (42.8%)
- Minimizing my carbon footprint (42.7%)
Altogether this indicates that the Nordic sustainable traveler is making conscious choices and taking action to make sure they minimize the environmental impact when going on holiday.
Curious to know more about the Nordic sustainable traveler? Reach out to Dennis Grauslund, our Senior Insights & Data Executive and expert in working with data within the tourism industry.
