Green Travel Not a Huge Concern for Asian Travelers

The third Asia Pacific Retail Travel Benchmarking Survey has revealed that travelers in Asia Pacific are less concerned about green tourism than they are about getting value-for-money.

This is a major marketing and environmental concern, since three of the largest outbound travel markets in the world are found in Asia: China, India and Japan.

While sustainability and carbon footprint reduction are headline news and concerns in the USA, Europe and Australia, it appears that these issues have yet to take hold in the Asia Pacifc region, at least with the region’s travelers.

Customers of travel agents in Australia topped this Travelport survey, with 31 percent of agencies reporting that customers were “very concerned” about sustainable tourism. Unfortunately for Mother Earth, this figure was more than double the Asia Pacific average!

In Singapore, both business and leisure travelers were the least concerned about reducing their carbon footprint according to the survey. A whopping 53% of travel agents in the Lion City said their customers were “not concerned at all’ about sustainable tourism, which is very surprising given the neat, clean and green environmental image that Singapore projects to the world.

For Singaporeans and Taiwanese business travelers, pursuit of profits outweighs environmental concerns, as business travelers from these two markets expressed the least interest in paying for sustainable travel, indicating that financial considerations were a priority for them.

“The lack of promotion to raise awareness of green travel may have contributed to these findings,” notes Brad Holman, president and managing director of Travelport GDS Asia Pacific, who adds “only 10 percent of travel agents proactively promote eco-friendly tourism on a regular basis.”

In my opinion, the results of this survey highlight a huge opportunity for travel agents in each market to develop eco-friendly travel programs that will appeal to those who put environmental concerns ahead of their own purses, pocket books, and corporate bottom lines.

Sponsored by Travelport, the 3rd Asia Pacific Retail Travel Benchmarking Survey was conducted with over 240 retail travel agents in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand.

What do you think? How can travel agents in Asia better promote sustainable tourism? Share your thoughts or comments.

Walmart’s Sustainable Product Index

The world of FMCG manufacturing and marketing may never be the same again.

As highlighted in our previous post Walmart Creates Green-Tag Program, the world’s largest retailer has announced plans to develop a worldwide Sustainable Product Index. The index will establish a single source of data for evaluating the sustainability of products.

In a press release on its corporate web site, Mike Duke, Walmart’s president and CEO said, “Customers want products that are more efficient, that last longer and perform better. And increasingly they want information about the entire lifecycle of a product so they can feel good about buying it. They want to know that the materials in the product are safe, that it was made well and that it was produced in a responsible way.”

Walmart will introduce this initiative in three phases, beginning with a survey of its more than 100,000 suppliers around the world. The survey includes 15 questions that will serve as a tool for Walmart’s suppliers to evaluate their own sustainability efforts. The questions will focus on four areas: energy and climate; material efficiency; natural resources, and; people and community.

As a second step, the company will help create a consortium of universities that will collaborate with suppliers, retailers, NGOs and government to develop a global database of information on the lifecycle of products — from raw materials to disposal. Walmart has provided the initial funding for the Sustainability Index Consortium, and invited all retailers and suppliers to contribute.

The final step in developing the Sustainable Product Index will be to translate the product information into a simple rating for consumers about the sustainability of products. This will provide customers with the transparency into the quality and history of products that they don’t have today.

I heard a quote in a movie while flying between Singapore and Seoul last week that seems most appropriate in this case:  “this is bigger than humungous….this makes humungous look small.” [I'll send an authographed copy of our book Powerful Marketing Minutes to the first reader who correctly identifies the name of the movie from which this line is taken.]

This is a powerful marketing step by Walmart, with implications throughout the world’s consumer products supply chains and with global reverberations likely to impact more than just the retail industry.

The green hues in the corporate image of Walmart continue to be strengthened and become more believable with each passing day.

Walmart Creates Green-Tag Program

Walmart will soon start requiring manufacturers to compute the full environmental costs of making and distributing their products.

The world’s largest retailer wants to use this information to create a simple green-tag program so its customers will see green label ratings alongside prices on a wide range of goods and products.

“I envision the day that you look at a piece of apparel, you flip a tag over, and learn about how sustainable it really is,” said Walmart Chief Merchandising Officer in an article yesterday in the Wall Street Journal. “It would be like the nutritional labeling is today. But there is some standarization that needs to take place.”

Walmart is reportedly making this move to get ahead of potential U.S. environmental-labeling regulations, something the company sees an inevitable and following similar requirements in Britian and Japan.

If Walmart is successful in implementing this system with its diverse supplier chain, it will certainly redefine how products are produced and sold, and add another criterion to the purchase decision process of millions of consumers.

It’s a great step by an organization that is clearly trying to reduce its environmental footprint while remaining the world’s largest retail operation.

GM Promises New Focus on Customers

CEO of the “new” General Motors, Fritz Henderson, said last week that “business as usual was over at General Motors” and that the carmaker “would focus on customers, cars and culture.”

No wonder GM, once the world’s largest carmaker, went broke! Apparently in the “old” GM a focus on customers was not a component of their usual business practices.

It amazes me how many companies, and Boards of Directors, fail to maintain a focus on customers. When too much attention is placed on internal processes, financial scorecards, and empire building, the poor old customer just gets lost in the shuffle.

General Motors is a classic example of why there needs to be a greater presence for marketing expertise in the corporate boardroom. Until this happens, we will continue to see many industrial stalwarths, such as GM, collapse, causing pain to thousands of employees, families, suppliers and even entire communities.

Let’s hope the “new” GM gets it right this time!

Slapping on the Fees

As a result of our previous post on Eliminate Stupid Rules & Fees, we were interviewed by Phil Dobbie recently for a BNET podcast.

You can listen here to the discussion in which I warn companies against slapping on fees to drive new revenue sources as I believe doing so risks increased customer churn and reductions in overall spend. Finding new ways to add fees to customers is a critical mistake made by inexperienced marketers.