A scoping exercise to explore the potential of green travel planning for the tourism industry

Abstract

Introduction: Malta has a transport problem, mainly because of its car-oriented culture, which leads to indirect negative effects (Bajada et al., 2023). Such negative impacts are exacerbated due to the high population density, which in 2022 stood at 1,649 persons per km2 (National Statistics Office, 2022). In addition to the Maltese population, on annual basis Malta hosts millions of tourists, with the year 2023 being a record year for reaching almost three million tourists (Malta Daily, 2023). In fact, tourism plays a key role in the Maltese economy, however, it adds pressures onto the infrastructure and the traffic problem. Given the problems associated with transport in Malta and the fact that tourism is one of the contributors to these problems it is worth exploring the possibility of providing traffic related solutions from the tourism sector. To this end, this study aims to serve as a scoping exercise to explore the potential of green travel planning for the tourism industry. This research looks specifically at four- and five-star hotels in Malta. This abstract proceeds with a brief theoretical background, the methodology used, research findings, contributions and implications and the conclusion.