A growing share of travellers want their holiday spending to do actual good in the places they visit. New Booking.com research covering 32,000 travellers across 34 countries puts numbers on it: 69% say they want to leave a destination better than they found it, and 73% want their money to benefit the local community. Around a quarter would even pay a premium for activities that give back locally.
There's a catch, though. A third of those surveyed admitted they have no idea how to find tours, activities or operators that genuinely support local communities rather than just claiming to. With two-thirds of travellers also chasing experiences that reflect local culture, that's a lot of good intentions with nowhere obvious to land.
Part of the problem is verification. Businesses love to talk about being 'local-first' or 'community-minded', but until now there hasn't been a standardised, credible way to prove it. Sustainability certifications tend to focus on environmental boxes — emissions, waste, energy — and often can't back up claims about local employment, sourcing or tax contributions with hard evidence.
That's the gap a new methodology from ICRT.global, developed with input from responsible tourism academic Professor Xavier Font, is trying to fill. Aimed at accommodation providers, it asks businesses to calculate the actual economic value they pump into their local area through three measurable channels: wages paid to local staff, money spent with local suppliers, and local taxes. The resulting figure gets published alongside the company's annual accounts, with the company's accountant providing oversight.
The appeal is that it's auditable and cheap. Once a business has adjusted its bookkeeping to track local spending separately, the figure can be produced annually at relatively low cost — no expensive certification audits required. It also aligns with the 2022 Responsible Tourism Charter, which lists a wide range of impacts businesses should address, from emissions to overcrowding and litter, while acknowledging they can't fix everything at once and must prioritise.
For travellers, the practical takeaway is to start asking better questions. Before booking a guesthouse, tour or experience, look for operators who publish concrete numbers — how many local people they employ, where their food and materials come from, what they contribute locally — rather than vague green messaging. Businesses using this kind of accounting-based reporting are, in theory, much harder to greenwash.
It also helps to know that simply spending differently can shift the needle: eating at family-run restaurants, booking locally owned stays and choosing guides based in the destination all route money into the community directly, no certification needed. The demand is clearly there; the tools to measure it are finally catching up.
