THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RESPONSIBLE TOURISM AND ONLINE TRAVEL PLATFORMS: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY LOOKING AT WHICH MARKETING STRATEGIES ARE BEING USED TO PROMOTE RESPONSIBLE TOURISM WITH THE GROWING DEMAND FOR SUSTAINABLE TRAVEL PRODUCTS

The tourism industry is a global phenomenon that contributes a significant proportion to the world’s overall GDP. With such a significant impact on the world’s economy, the industry is faced with unprecedented challenges that threatens its future growth. Therefore, to combat global issues such as climate change and mass tourism, the term responsible tourism has emerged in response to the negative social and environmental impacts. Through a set of industry protocols, responsible tourism aims to maximize the positives by encouraging sustainable tourism behavior that enriches and benefits host destinations. It is important to acknowledge responsible tourism shares common traits with ‘sustainable tourism’, ‘ethical tourism’, ‘eco-tourism’ and a host of other socially conscious tourism practices. However, the industry has favored the term responsible tourism to describe a distinct market niche that seeks to engage in a higher level of responsibility. Parallel to the industry, consumer needs are rapidly changing and have become more complex, meaning there is a higher level of demand for sustainable travel products. With an increasing number of consumers actively seeking sustainable travel products and services, a whole new market segment of responsible consumers concerned with social and environmental issues has arisen. In general, responsible tourism has become an established area within the tourism industry. With a new wave of technological advances such as E-Tourism, a new type of intermediary has emerged. These new types of digital platforms are rapidly growing and have little to no research that explores the relationship between online travel platforms and responsible tourism. This therefore lends itself to the exploration of looking at “how online travel platforms are promoting responsible tourism, with the growing demand for sustainable travel products”. In order to fully investigate the proposed research question, textual analysis is used as an appropriate research method, alongside an interdisciplinary theoretical approach. A selection of sustainable travel platforms serves to research the problem and a thematic analysis approach is used to analyze the complete data set. The findings indicate several marketing activities being used to promote responsible tourism. First, the platforms appear to target distinct customer segments through certain content. Second, the promotion of sustainable products through alternative appeals is implemented. Finally, themes are created based on the values and initiatives of the travel platforms.