Benidorm named as the most eco-friendly travel destination

Popular destination for UK sunseekers called one of the most green.

Travel Insurance News - 30/12/2010

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Thomson Holidays says Benidorm in Spain is amongst the most environmentally-friendly tourist destinations. Thomson, one of Britain’s main travel firms and a prime supplier of the large numbers of tourists who visit the Costa Blanca, announced its conclusion in a new travel report.

The study, called Sustainable Holiday Futures, was just published by Thomson. The detailed report includes an in-depth analysis made of future trends identified in mass-market tourism.

In one chapter, ‘The Benidorm Effect’, the study proposes that holiday trips to long-haul destinations such as beachside bungelows and low-level luxury hotels in the Maldives actually produced more pollution than does travel to typical mass-market high-rise travel destinations such as Benidorm. This conclusion contradicts the conventional thinking, which says that large-volume, mass-market journeys to spots like Benidorm have the worst effect on the environment.

The chapter highlights how many holidaymakers have a common misconception about the sizes of their carbon footprints when they decide where to holiday. Two weeks yachting in the West Indies, for example, actually produces six times the carbon emissions per person generated from a package holiday in Benidorm.

The core component of this and other similar examples is the long distance travelled by air. A boating holiday off Britain’s coast or taking hikes in the Yorkshire Dales is more environmentally friendly than going boating in the West Indies or hiking somewhere in South America.

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