Innovation towards tourism sustainability: climate change and aviation

A wide range of publications has shown that the tourism sector is increasingly environmentally unsustainable. This is mainly caused by the contribution of aviation to a large and growing amount of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions by tourism. In the light of this, we present an overview of developments in the aviation sector and discuss current options for innovation towards sustainability in three areas: technology, lifestyle, and policy. Due to continuing technological innovation, aviation will be more fuel efficient in the future. But possibilities are limited and will probably not reverse the trend of increasing overall emissions of tourism air transport. With respect to lifestyle it is shown that only a small number of tourist trips causes the main impact. Political innovation may concentrate on financial instruments like tax on international travel, levies on emissions or emission trading are considered. The main challenge will be product innovation within tourism directed at tourism with a smaller air transport component.