Sustainability isn’t optional for luxury travel companies anymore | Canada Voices

At Miramonti, a 94-year-old, family-run, luxury property high in the Dolomites in northeastern Italy, you’ll forget about the tiny soap bottles that were once hotel staples. And don’t look for the giant dispensers that replaced them as a more environmentally friendly option in recent years either.

Instead, the resort owners created Mun – an organic soap production company – and developed a unique dispenser that produces thin shavings on demand. The result: a feel-good, zero-waste, community connection dopamine hit every time guests wash their hands.

It’s exactly the kind of “I can’t wait to tell my friends!” experience that Vancouver-based travel advisor Clea Eloise of Altior Lux says her luxury clients are seeking. “Whether clients are specifically considering a property for their sustainable practices or not, I believe it’s my responsibility to highlight those in the luxury travel space who are doing something right,” she says. But, more importantly, she points out: “It’ll make them pick one trip over another.”

It hasn’t always been that way.

In its 2026 Travel and Sustainability Report, Booking.com – which has surveyed 260,000 travellers across 35 markets over the last 11 years – found that more travellers than ever are choosing sustainable options. In fact, in 2026, 85 per cent of Canadian travellers said sustainable travel is important to them. That’s a significant shift from 2016, when fewer than half – 42 per cent – said they travelled sustainably.

In part, the increase may be due to growing public awareness, which has expanded the idea of sustainability beyond simple solutions like planting trees and toward a broader understanding of what it can actually mean in practice. For example, 46 per cent of travellers indicated they plan to avoid overcrowded tourist destinations and 48 per cent said they plan to travel outside of peak season. Other items identified in the Booking.com report included reducing energy consumption and supporting local businesses.

This evolving understanding of sustainability is also showing up in the luxury travel space. The 2025 Virtuoso Global Luxury Traveller Report found that a third of affluent Canadian travellers are willing to pay more for companies and experiences that preserve natural and cultural heritage, benefit the local people and economy and adopt environmentally friendly practices.

As high-spending travellers have become increasingly willing to pay more for these efforts, sustainability is no longer a niche differentiator in luxury travel; it’s becoming part of the baseline expectation, particularly among travellers who expect the best from every part of their vacation.

Joseph Chung, vice president of account management at a Toronto-based environmental non-profit organization, is exactly the kind of discerning traveller that’s driving change. “I tell people that I’m a hotel snob, meaning that I won’t settle for lower standards just to save a few dollars,” he says. “Where I stay is definitely influenced by my own considerations like, ‘Can I walk to most places from this location?’ or ‘Does the hotel company have programs and policies that are committed to supporting sustainable practices?’”

These efforts can, of course, run the gamut, from bamboo room keys at Turks and Caicos’ Rock House hotel and lip balm made with poolside local botanicals at Tuscany’s Castello di Casole to on-site vegetable gardens at B.C.’s Naturally Pacific Resort and women’s empowerment programs supported by Time and Tide, which offers luxury African safaris.

But as sustainability has become a selling point in luxury travel, it has also become a marketing priority – the number of companies eager to showcase their socially responsible behaviour has risen alongside luxury travellers’ appetite for values-driven experiences. This has brought more scrutiny to what is genuinely meaningful change versus what risks slipping into greenwashing – the term used to describe sticking an environmentally friendly label on a non-existent impact.

Eloise says a good clue is when the sustainability efforts feel embedded rather than performed, “especially those who aren’t bragging about it or screaming it from the rooftops,” she says. “But rather approaching the concept of sustainability as something generational, genuine and constantly evolving.”

For example, at the Fairmont Royal York in Toronto, the hotel aims to inform guests without bombarding them. Most information about the property’s sustainability efforts is done through passive storytelling: a mention about the distance your main course ingredients have travelled on the menu at Reign Restaurant, or a note at the Library Bar about their partnership with Civil Pours, a program that takes everything from avocado pits to lemon scraps and gives them a second life in distillates and liquors, which the hotel buys back and uses on their cocktail menu.

Chung says that because he travels quite extensively, he recognizes when properties are making genuine efforts to improve their environmental impact. “It’s not about a big statement or position,” he says. “But showing me that the little things are important because they actually help change behaviour.”