ABSTRACT
It has long been recognised in the academic literature that developing tourism in a sustainable manner is vital for all destinations. Sustainable development in general and sustainable tourism development in particular have received growing attention in government and business planning and policies. Some companies also started to be more responsible with the environment. There have been growing numbers of supporting services from other sectors including green hotels, bio-products and low emissions rental cars. It is of course best to combine efforts from all product suppliers and consumers to achieve sustainability in tourism. However, one very important area in sustainable tourism development is transport services for tourists. Tourism contributes at least 4.4 per cent of global CO2 emissions and a large part of it (75 per cent) comes from transport, although this figure may be considerably larger if radiative forcing is also considered (Dubois et al., 2011; Hall et al., 2013; Scott et al., 2012a). Consequently, reducing transport emissions is a priority task in mitigating the emissions from tourism (Gössling et al., 2013). This has become even more important due to the continuing problems of growing population, increasing traffic congestion and pollution, and the impacts of climate change. Of the several initiatives to reduce emissions in tourism transport, shifting to more eco-friendly transport modes (e.g. public transport) is one promising direction (Dickinson and Dickinson, 2006; Scott et al., 2012b).
