Chinese travellers are increasingly concerned about climate change and are aware of their environmental footprint, but are still not ready to pay extra for sustainable travel, according to a recent report by consulting firm McKinsey & Company and Chinese travel services provider Trip.com Group. Data from McKinsey, which surveyed a total of 5,457 respondents from 13 countries including China, the United States, India and Saudi Arabia, showed that more than 60 per cent of Chinese travellers were worried about climate change and believed that commercial aviation should become carbon neutral in the future, putting China near the top among the countries surveyed. A separate survey conducted by Trip.com last year showed that almost 85 per cent of Chinese travellers rated sustainable travel as important or very important. However, compared to travellers from other countries, Chinese tourists are reluctant to pay a premium for sustainable travel. Only 20 per cent of surveyed Chinese tourists said they would pay 2 per cent extra for carbon-neutral airline tickets, ranking near the bottom among the countries surveyed, according to a whitepaper jointly published by McKinsey and Trip.com on Wednesday examining the environmental impact of China’s tourism sector. Hong Kong needs to build ESG talent pool to shape globally acceptable standards “The Chinese tourism industry is large enough to take the lead in advancing the sustainability agenda,” Jonathan Woetzel, senior partner at McKinsey, said in a statement on Wednesday. “As travellers resume their adventures, each step of their journey presents opportunities to make choices and take concrete actions that could immediately reduce their environmental footprint.” The whitepaper came the same day China announced it would reopen its borders to foreign tourists after nearly three years of Covid-19 restrictions. The country had started allowing Chinese tourists to travel abroad in January. The report also comes as sustainability and China’s 2060 carbon-neutral goals increasingly become Beijing’s top priorities. State media People’s Daily published an article this week saying that green is a “base colour” of China’s high-quality development. According to McKinsey, the environmental impact of China’s travel industry is substantial. In 2019, Chinese travellers took six billion domestic leisure trips, and over 150 million international trips from mainland China, resulting in around US$1 trillion in travel spend. Meanwhile, domestic tourism represented around 6 to 8 per cent of China’s total carbon emissions, generating around 800 megatons (Mt) of carbon dioxide in total. Accommodation generated 60 per cent of China’s domestic travel emissions in 2019, mostly due to high energy consumption, according to McKinsey. Aviation was the top emitter in the transport subsector, although only 1 per cent of domestic trips involved a flight. Ratings agencies must overhaul processes to reflect climate risks, study says In addition, China’s domestic tourists consumed between seven billion and eight billion cubic metres of water in 2019 from showers, bathing and laundry during trips, which are enough to fill six million Olympic-size swimming pools. Mainland China’s domestic tourists also generated 12 to 14 Mt of solid waste annually, enough to cover 3,600 football fields if laid flat, according to the report. According to the World Travel and Tourism Council, with domestic and international reopening policies in place, mainland China is expected to have the largest tourism market by 2032, making sustainable tourism an even more pressing issue. The report suggested that by making smarter decisions, and with the help of incentives from travel providers, Chinese travellers could reduce 10 to 20 per cent of their environmental footprint on a typical trip. Some measures include booking sustainable travel options with certified service providers, spending more time in one destination, and cultivating sustainable habits such as changing towels or bed linen less frequently, and refusing to use single-use plastics. The report also made suggestions for China’s hospitality industry, such as using technology platforms to make sustainable travel options more visible online, using labelling to ensure travellers are informed about the environmental impact of their actions, providing incentives to encourage sustainable behaviour, and training employees to adopt a sustainability mindset. In response to China’s net-zero emissions goal, Trip.com announced last July a long-term goal to build green tourism. It said it would work with partners to launch more than 10,000 low-carbon travel products, such as zero-waste camping and hiking trips, and low-carbon hotels and flights, to engage at least 100 million travellers in low-carbon practices. “The burden is not on the traveller alone,” said McKinsey’s Woetzel. “Long-term change calls for collaboration between actors across the entire travel industry, from hotels and travel agencies to green investors and technology suppliers.”