Focus of work
Eco Attractions Group (EAG) is a unique national collaboration between some of the best loved public and influential visitor attractions across the UK, with a common goal of working together to help connect people with nature and inspire sustainable living.
EAG’s national membership collectively welcomes over 4.5 million visitors every year, and one of the biggest parts of any visitor experience’s carbon footprint comes from its visitors travelling to the attraction by car.
The Good Travel project aims to:
- Measure the scale of the problem by collecting hard data across a wide UK baseline on visitor car use
- Conduct research into the effectiveness of possible behaviour change incentives – what might change visitors’ behaviour by incentivising a switch to a sustainable transport option, and
- Develop a plan for trialling the most promising routes to help more visitors go car free.
Impact
The UK tourism industry, particularly visitor attractions, need to address this elephant in the room, that by far the biggest part of their carbon footprint is from visitors’ cars. The Good Travel Project will implement a visitor survey linked to the Eco Attractions Group members’ online ticket booking systems, as well as surveying existing supporters and staff of these great green days out venues. They will also share the survey with their friends at Good Journey so they can offer it to their visitor experience members too.
The outputs/impact for change will be:
- Hard data on the carbon from visitors travelling by car to visitor attractions and starting to measure the scale of the problem
- Visitor survey data to discover incentives that visitors themselves say would help them go car free and those that attractions could implement going forward to help visitors come without their car
- Travel carbon targets for attractions to reduce visitor travel carbon among staff and visitors.
In the future:
- Sector leadership with all EAG members achieving the Good Journey Mark status to lead by example
- Industry leadership equipping EAG members to be thought leaders in this area and campaign for sector wide change.