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Tourism as one of the largest industries in the world has negative effects on society and environment as well as a huge potential to contribute to sustainable development. Although the efforts towards sustainable tourism date back a few decades, green travel products remain mainly on a niche scale. Until the recent years research focused on identifying sustainable travellers predominantly on the prototype of ecotourists with pro-environmental values. Mainstreaming sustainable tourism continues to be a challenge for the tourism industry - ways of identifying potential sustainable travellers on large scale are needed. The author investigates the aspects of sustainable consumption in general and specifically for the tourism industry. In order to understand the barriers to sustainable travel - information behaviour, use of sustainability marketing tools and customer cost related to sustainable travel are analysed and completed by primary research information to bring knowledge in this area forward.

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The author Maria Hartwig studied Archaeology and Ethnology in Bratislava (Slovakia) and Sustainable Tourism Management in Eberswalde (Germany). She worked in marketing and tourism for organisations in the United Kingdom and Germany.

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