China’s burgeoning appetite for sustainable travel is creating new opportunities within the world’s most lucrative travel market, according to the chairwoman of Booking.com.
Gillian Tans told CNBC that the U.S.-owned travel operator, which has been operating in China for close to a decade, has recorded a recent uptick in demand from Chinese tourists looking for responsible travel alternatives, bringing the country closer in line with a wider shift in global travel trends.
“We see trends here in China, which is a bit comparable to what we see anywhere else in the world, but we see for instance that customers think about responsible tourism and Chinese customers think about overtourism,” Tans said Tuesday at CNBC’s East Tech West conference in the Nansha district of Guangzhou, China.
Citing a recent study conducted by Booking.com on sustainable tourism trends, Tans noted that 79% of customers said they would be happy to switch their chosen holiday destination if they were presented with an alternative that was better for the environment. The findings come amid growing international concern about the social and environmental impacts of growing global tourism.
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