"In terms of sustainable tourism, the Swiss can clearly do more"

At the end of 2024, a study published in « Nature Communications » showed that, by itself, the tourism sector was responsible for 8.8% of anthropogenic global warming in 2019.

After the brief Covid interlude, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), the contribution of travel and tourism to total greenhouse gas emissions worldwide still reached 6.5% in 2023. In a world forced to decarbonize as quickly as possible, tourism will therefore clearly have a role to play.

But how are attitudes changing among the Swiss population and the global tourism industry? This time we hand the microphone to François Germanier, corporate communications project manager and spokesperson for Switzerland Tourism, that public-law corporation mandated by the Confederation to promote Switzerland's tourism offerings.

How important are ecological issues currently in our vacation choices?

Ahead of summer 2024, we conducted a survey on the sustainability practices of Swiss and European guests and the role that ecological factors could play in choosing one destination or tourism provider over another.

It appears that 30% of respondents in Switzerland chose at least once, when booking their holidays, to offset their CO₂ emissions or to use a tour operator committed to sustainability. German-speaking Switzerland is the laggard, with only 30% of those surveyed, compared with 32% in French-speaking Switzerland and 36% in Ticino. One thing is certain, the Swiss can clearly do more in terms of sustainable tourism.

Note that due to the various crises the world is currently going through and inflation, it seems that travelers have an increasingly limited budget for their vacations. Thus, although sustainability and ecological factors have been a real trend for several years, traveling sustainably may be becoming increasingly difficult financially.

Is Switzerland doing enough to decarbonize its tourism sector?

At Switzerland Tourism, our mission is not to pass value judgments on the efforts made by the tourism sector in this respect. That did not prevent us from developing the Swisstainable program in collaboration with the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts and the Swiss tourism sector.

Launched in 2021 with the aim of bringing the sector together around sustainability, the initiative has an increasing number of participants, whether at level I, II or III. A Dashboard is also updated regularly (last update : 28.07.2025) and allows us to have an overview of these statistics.

Overall, 15.6% of travelers highlight Switzerland's relaxing nature and the fact that there are few tourists in the country as the main tourist attractions.

Today global tourism still generates 6.5% of global carbon emissions (2023 figures)… How could the sector reduce this footprint in your view?

That's a fact, yes, but nonetheless the sector contributes to sustainability. And this in all areas, not only ecologically, but also economically (job security) and socially (acceptability of tourism). In this context, we added on our website an entire section called "travel better".

With targeted promotion and intelligent guidance, our goal is to bring the right guests to the right place at the right time. For this we have defined five key areas of action :

• Promote tourism year-round to discover and enjoy Switzerland in the low season and help travel professionals set up appropriate offers.
• Better manage visitor flows in favor of new destinations and lesser-known activities.
• Extend the stay by paying particular attention to trips where Switzerland is the only destination visited.
• Advance Swisstainable by increasing the range of services that allow reducing one's carbon footprint and favoring local and sustainable suppliers.
• Strengthen the acceptability of tourism in Switzerland by taking part in local and national initiatives to ensure that tourism develops in line with the needs of the local population.

Recently the French sociologist published a book praising the micro-trip… is this a serious avenue for Swiss tourism and a way to enable citizens to (re)discover their country and regions?

Hand in hand with the various tourism stakeholders in Switzerland, we strive to offer alternative solutions capable of attracting our national clientele, which remains the most important for the Swiss tourism sector with 50 % of hotel overnight stays in 2023.

By way of example, note the campaign "The Magic of Beautiful Sites", carried out in collaboration with the Federal Office of Culture, which invites Swiss residents to discover little-known places. Another initiative: "Grape Escapes", a program bringing together around sixty accommodations allowing visitors to spend the night in the heart of the vineyards.

Stressful airports, crowded tourist sites, long flights… can we still speak of pleasure when talking about travel?

The situation you describe is not entirely true for Switzerland, which is not exposed to mass tourism like certain European urban centers such as Amsterdam, Barcelona or Venice. In Switzerland, there are indeed only a few temporary bottlenecks whose situation is taken very seriously by our organization. Since the end of Covid, hotel overnight stays have been increasing slightly each year, which shows the attractiveness of our country as a holiday destination.

Finally, the Monitoring of Swiss Tourism (MTS) 2023, a larger survey conducted among travelers at the European level, tells us that 15.6% of travelers highlight Switzerland's relaxing character and the fact that there are few tourists in the country as the main tourist attractions. The two markets that top the ranking among respondents are France and Germany, two very important markets for Switzerland Tourism.

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