The Millennials, also known as Generation Y, a well-informed and socially responsible group of people born between the years 1980 and 2000, are transforming the travel industry, which is currently striving to respond to the changing market conditions.
The new trend among this social segment, whose members constitute the spearhead of economic activity and thus can afford to travel to foreign countries, is “reaching out to local communities, learning the local customs, and fully experiencing with all senses what each place has to offer.”
Of course, realizing how some of our supposedly innocent personal decisions may affect other people’s lives and our planet in general has also played a key role in shaping new attitudes and creating new perspectives in vacation planning, especially when travelling abroad.
As early as 1990, a number of joint initiatives aiming to strategically promote ecotourism were launched by government agencies and organizations active in tourism, and have been supported since by companies and individuals around the world.
For example, the International Ecotourism Society has been providing for decades the guidelines, setting the standards and advancing the principles of ecotourism in more than 120 countries. However, ecotourism does not always mean eco-friendly tourism. Guests could spend their vacations close to nature but at the same time leave their footprint in a way that has a negative impact in the environment and the native population.
Therefore, it comes without saying that we should all significantly contribute in the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions and untreatable waste by discouraging uncontrollable pollution in places we travel.
We could actively repudiate overexploitation of the environment, and hopefully avoid global warming and other undesirable or irreversible effects, if only we were more sensitive to eco-friendly vacation offers. Instead of blindly selecting one of the package deals that are usually advertised online, we should rather ask for more information about environmentally inspired trips and search on our own for the true facts.
Check out the destinations in terms of the methods they use in agriculture, transportation, energy production and recycling. You will be surprised to see that some of the most unspoiled places in our planet face unaddressed challenges because of wrongful practices in the expansion of tourism.
As far as concerns my home country, Greece, a country that almost doubles its population in summertime thanks to tourism, it is worth noting that travelers seek to have all options available. In the morning they may desire to walk alone their way discovering pathways or sail routes that usually lead to a remote beach, but also like to spend the evening tasting extraordinary food recipes of fresh “tsipoura” and “lavraki” fish, accompanied with green salad enriched with local herbs and extra virgin olive oil pressed on the olive mill of the area.