Consumers' perceptions of travel agencies' environmental sustainability communication - Finnish tourists traveling to Greece for package tours

Abstract

Sustainability has become a global raising trend, which has also reached the tourism industry: travelers are increasingly searching for a way to minimize the environmental and social impacts of their travels. Sustainability communication is a way for companies to inform consumers about the companies’ actions regarding their sustainability practices. This thesis evaluates consumers’ perceptions of environmental sustainability communication in the context of travel agencies.

This research examines the effectiveness of the environmental sustainability communication of the anonymous commissioner company of the thesis. The aim of this thesis is to analyze how the sustainability communication of this company is perceived by its customers.

The theoretical framework of the thesis is based on the Theory of Reasoned Action supported by academic literature from the fields of sustainable tourism and green marketing. The collection of the research data was conducted with a mixed-method approach, by conducting a questionnaire that included both quantitative and open-ended text questions. The sample of the study was focused on Finnish tourists traveling to Greece with the commissioner company’s package tours.

The questionnaire conducted in the Webropol platform gained 487 responses. The results of the study indicate that different demographic variables, such as gender and the respondents’ subjective environmental awareness, seem to impact the way respondents react to sustainability communication and thus, their rebooking and word-of-mouth intentions. Furthermore, while looking at the results, it can be noticed that the respondents connect values such as locality, responsibility and respect for nature with travel agencies’ sustainability communication.