Succeeding With Nudging For Sustainable Visitor Experiences
The Cross-Re-Tour project unites European tourism SMEs to design practical “sustainability nudges” that make eco-friendly choices easy and rewarding, turning good intentions into real behavioural change.
Tourism businesses face a critical challenge in encouraging visitors to make sustainable choices without alienating guests. For small and medium-sized enterprises operating with limited resources, the solution lies not in expensive infrastructure overhauls but in intelligent operational adjustments that gently guide behaviour. By bringing together SMEs from across Europe, the Cross-Re-Tour project aims to develop, test and scale practical sustainability solutions that work within operational constraints whilst genuinely shifting visitor behaviour towards more environmentally responsible choices.
When 126 tourism professionals from eight European countries gathered in Riga for Cross-Re-Tour's sustainability nudging workshop on 6-8 May 2025, they explored exactly this challenge. Facilitated by the DTTT's team of design thinking experts, a refined methodology developed through over 100 similar innovation sessions across Europe transformed abstract sustainability challenges into actionable solutions. The success of this approach lies in encouraging complete creative freedom to generate a vast quantity of ideas. In approaching challenges from a new angle, this process excels in identifying practical solutions by driving deep strategic thinking. More significantly, the session revealed how European tourism SMEs possess remarkable capacity for collaborative innovation.
Why Good Intentions Aren't Enough
One of sustainability's most persistent challenges lies in the dramatic gap between what people say they value and what they actually do. We've all experienced this disconnect. We genuinely care about environmental issues and fully intend to make better choices, yet when faced with actual decisions in the moment, our behaviour often doesn't match our values. This intention-action gap explains why traditional sustainability approaches, no matter how well-intentioned or informative, so frequently fail to deliver meaningful results.
The tourism industry sees this pattern play out daily. Most travellers express strong support for sustainable travel, and a significant majority want to travel more responsibly. Yet when it comes to actual choices, like paying to offset flight emissions or choosing public transport over convenience, the overwhelming majority opt for the easier, less sustainable option. This is human psychology encountering real-world friction, immediate costs and the absence of systems designed to make sustainable choices the natural path.
This is where sustainability nudging becomes essential. Research shows that the vast majority of a tourist's potential individual carbon footprint reduction remains untapped, not because people refuse to change, but because the systems within which they make decisions don't support sustainable choices. Tourism businesses occupy a pivotal position in addressing this challenge. Unlike many industries, tourism provides direct, repeated interaction with travellers during moments when they're open to new experiences and different routines.
By intelligently designing the choice architecture within which guests make decisions, businesses can make sustainable options the natural, convenient and rewarding path rather than the difficult alternative requiring conscious effort and sacrifice. For example, it is well known that tourists consume significantly more water while travelling than they do at home. However, this isn't due to personal wastefulness, but because factors like hotel infrastructure, pricing structures and the psychological context are all different from their home environment. Since the immediate environment has such a dramatic influence on behaviour, intelligently changing that context through better design offers huge potential for a positive environmental impact.
The Science Behind Sustainable Choices
The keynote by Nick Hall, Founder & CEO of DTTT, established the theoretical foundation that guided the workshop. Rather than abstract theory, Nick presented a comprehensive framework grounded in global case studies and research findings, demonstrating exactly why certain nudging techniques succeed where others fail. Understanding the psychology of holiday behaviour proved central to this framework. Travellers don't become different people when they check into accommodation; they enter a different psychological state. They're removed from normal routines and social accountability and are in a mindset of temporary escape and self-indulgence. This explains why behaviour changes so dramatically from home to holiday contexts.
Yet travellers also want meaningful experiences, authentic connections and the feeling that their choices matter. Research consistently shows that guests respond positively to opportunities to contribute to destination sustainability when those opportunities are presented as empowering contributions. Tourists want to feel good about their choices, not bad about their indulgences. This reality shaped the workshop's entire approach. Rather than asking how to restrict or prevent unsustainable behaviour, participants explored how to design systems that make sustainable choices emotionally rewarding, socially affirmed and personally beneficial.
The three-pillar nudging framework formed the conceptual backbone of the discussions:
Emotional nudging creates personal resonance through storytelling and immersive experiences that inspire sustainable behaviour. This approach recognises that positive emotions drive more sustainable behaviour modification than guilt or obligation. When guests feel inspired and connected to a meaningful purpose, their actions align naturally with sustainable choices.
Normative nudging establishes sustainable practices as social norms through peer influence, default choice design and community recognition systems. This pillar focuses on achieving cognitive behavioural change through actions such as social comparison and behavioural dashboards. The power of normative nudging lies in making sustainable choices the path of least resistance. When sustainable options become the default rather than the alternative, behaviour changes without requiring conscious decision-making or willpower.
Gain-based nudging implements tangible rewards, gamification elements and recognition platforms that make sustainable choices immediately beneficial. This addresses the practical question of how to reward or incentivise positive actions, creating immediate personal value for choices that generate long-term collective benefits.
The critical insight Nick emphasised is that no single nudging technique delivers transformative results in isolation. Each intervention might achieve modest behaviour change, perhaps a 5-10% improvement. However, when emotional, normative and gain-based techniques work together across multiple touchpoints throughout the guest journey, these small impacts compound dramatically. A hotel implementing half a dozen well-designed nudges across water, energy, food and waste might achieve a 30-40% reduction in environmental impact without guests experiencing any sense of restriction or sacrifice.
From Theory to Innovation
Participants worked in six thematic groups to generate over 1000 innovative concepts addressing water consumption, plastic reduction, resource management, mobility and transport, food consumption and energy efficiency. With each group having representatives from multiple countries, diverse perspectives enabled ideation that works across cultural contexts.
The innovation process began with grounding discussions in actual operational realities. Each group identified existing strengths within their business contexts, explored growth opportunities for sustainable practices and honestly assessed barriers to implementation. Using Challenge Prompt Cards, teams prioritised the most pressing challenges before systematically exploring all three nudging techniques. The strongest concepts were rigorously examined to identify both positive outcomes and potential risks, ensuring solutions addressed the full complexity of real-world implementation.
The resulting innovations demonstrated remarkable creativity and practical nuance. Each group shared elevator pitches articulating the purpose, processes and motivations behind their innovations. These presentations prepared concepts for real-world implementation by distilling complex ideas into clear narratives addressing both environmental objectives and business realities. Perhaps most celebrated was the "Living Light Switch", where soft sounds play as lights get turned off, creating positive emotional associations with energy conservation. "Fluffy the Pillow" was another widely appreciated solution, creating stronger connections between guests and the furniture in their room by providing information about where the material was sourced and how it was made. At the centre of both of these solutions is how they transform what was once a mundane interaction into joyful experiences.
The intention-action gap that has frustrated sustainability efforts for decades now has practical, implementable solutions ready for real-world testing. As the Cross-Re-Tour project progresses, the DTTT will follow the successful implementation of each business's sustainability actions closely. A dedicated podcast series will be launched next year to amplify the impact of these innovations and share learning across Europe's tourism sector. Documenting both triumphs and challenges, the podcast aims to inspire and guide other SMEs embarking on their own sustainability journeys, demonstrating that transformative change is achievable within realistic resource constraints.
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Tourism businesses face a critical challenge in encouraging visitors to make sustainable choices without alienating guests. For small and medium-sized enterprises operating with limited resources, the solution lies not in expensive infrastructure overhauls but in intelligent operational adjustments that gently guide behaviour. By bringing together SMEs from across Europe, the Cross-Re-Tour project aims to develop, test and scale practical sustainability solutions that work within operational constraints whilst genuinely shifting visitor behaviour towards more environmentally responsible choices.
When 126 tourism professionals from eight European countries gathered in Riga for Cross-Re-Tour's sustainability nudging workshop on 6-8 May 2025, they explored exactly this challenge. Facilitated by the DTTT's team of design thinking experts, a refined methodology developed through over 100 similar innovation sessions across Europe transformed abstract sustainability challenges into actionable solutions. The success of this approach lies in encouraging complete creative freedom to generate a vast quantity of ideas. In approaching challenges from a new angle, this process excels in identifying practical solutions by driving deep strategic thinking. More significantly, the session revealed how European tourism SMEs possess remarkable capacity for collaborative innovation.
Why Good Intentions Aren't Enough
One of sustainability's most persistent challenges lies in the dramatic gap between what people say they value and what they actually do. We've all experienced this disconnect. We genuinely care about environmental issues and fully intend to make better choices, yet when faced with actual decisions in the moment, our behaviour often doesn't match our values. This intention-action gap explains why traditional sustainability approaches, no matter how well-intentioned or informative, so frequently fail to deliver meaningful results.
The tourism industry sees this pattern play out daily. Most travellers express strong support for sustainable travel, and a significant majority want to travel more responsibly. Yet when it comes to actual choices, like paying to offset flight emissions or choosing public transport over convenience, the overwhelming majority opt for the easier, less sustainable option. This is human psychology encountering real-world friction, immediate costs and the absence of systems designed to make sustainable choices the natural path.
This is where sustainability nudging becomes essential. Research shows that the vast majority of a tourist's potential individual carbon footprint reduction remains untapped, not because people refuse to change, but because the systems within which they make decisions don't support sustainable choices. Tourism businesses occupy a pivotal position in addressing this challenge. Unlike many industries, tourism provides direct, repeated interaction with travellers during moments when they're open to new experiences and different routines.
By intelligently designing the choice architecture within which guests make decisions, businesses can make sustainable options the natural, convenient and rewarding path rather than the difficult alternative requiring conscious effort and sacrifice. For example, it is well known that tourists consume significantly more water while travelling than they do at home. However, this isn't due to personal wastefulness, but because factors like hotel infrastructure, pricing structures and the psychological context are all different from their home environment. Since the immediate environment has such a dramatic influence on behaviour, intelligently changing that context through better design offers huge potential for a positive environmental impact.
The Science Behind Sustainable Choices
The keynote by Nick Hall, Founder & CEO of DTTT, established the theoretical foundation that guided the workshop. Rather than abstract theory, Nick presented a comprehensive framework grounded in global case studies and research findings, demonstrating exactly why certain nudging techniques succeed where others fail. Understanding the psychology of holiday behaviour proved central to this framework. Travellers don't become different people when they check into accommodation; they enter a different psychological state. They're removed from normal routines and social accountability and are in a mindset of temporary escape and self-indulgence. This explains why behaviour changes so dramatically from home to holiday contexts.
Yet travellers also want meaningful experiences, authentic connections and the feeling that their choices matter. Research consistently shows that guests respond positively to opportunities to contribute to destination sustainability when those opportunities are presented as empowering contributions. Tourists want to feel good about their choices, not bad about their indulgences. This reality shaped the workshop's entire approach. Rather than asking how to restrict or prevent unsustainable behaviour, participants explored how to design systems that make sustainable choices emotionally rewarding, socially affirmed and personally beneficial.
The three-pillar nudging framework formed the conceptual backbone of the discussions:
Emotional nudging creates personal resonance through storytelling and immersive experiences that inspire sustainable behaviour. This approach recognises that positive emotions drive more sustainable behaviour modification than guilt or obligation. When guests feel inspired and connected to a meaningful purpose, their actions align naturally with sustainable choices.
Normative nudging establishes sustainable practices as social norms through peer influence, default choice design and community recognition systems. This pillar focuses on achieving cognitive behavioural change through actions such as social comparison and behavioural dashboards. The power of normative nudging lies in making sustainable choices the path of least resistance. When sustainable options become the default rather than the alternative, behaviour changes without requiring conscious decision-making or willpower.
Gain-based nudging implements tangible rewards, gamification elements and recognition platforms that make sustainable choices immediately beneficial. This addresses the practical question of how to reward or incentivise positive actions, creating immediate personal value for choices that generate long-term collective benefits.
The critical insight Nick emphasised is that no single nudging technique delivers transformative results in isolation. Each intervention might achieve modest behaviour change, perhaps a 5-10% improvement. However, when emotional, normative and gain-based techniques work together across multiple touchpoints throughout the guest journey, these small impacts compound dramatically. A hotel implementing half a dozen well-designed nudges across water, energy, food and waste might achieve a 30-40% reduction in environmental impact without guests experiencing any sense of restriction or sacrifice.
From Theory to Innovation
Participants worked in six thematic groups to generate over 1000 innovative concepts addressing water consumption, plastic reduction, resource management, mobility and transport, food consumption and energy efficiency. With each group having representatives from multiple countries, diverse perspectives enabled ideation that works across cultural contexts.
The innovation process began with grounding discussions in actual operational realities. Each group identified existing strengths within their business contexts, explored growth opportunities for sustainable practices and honestly assessed barriers to implementation. Using Challenge Prompt Cards, teams prioritised the most pressing challenges before systematically exploring all three nudging techniques. The strongest concepts were rigorously examined to identify both positive outcomes and potential risks, ensuring solutions addressed the full complexity of real-world implementation.
The resulting innovations demonstrated remarkable creativity and practical nuance. Each group shared elevator pitches articulating the purpose, processes and motivations behind their innovations. These presentations prepared concepts for real-world implementation by distilling complex ideas into clear narratives addressing both environmental objectives and business realities. Perhaps most celebrated was the "Living Light Switch", where soft sounds play as lights get turned off, creating positive emotional associations with energy conservation. "Fluffy the Pillow" was another widely appreciated solution, creating stronger connections between guests and the furniture in their room by providing information about where the material was sourced and how it was made. At the centre of both of these solutions is how they transform what was once a mundane interaction into joyful experiences.
The intention-action gap that has frustrated sustainability efforts for decades now has practical, implementable solutions ready for real-world testing. As the Cross-Re-Tour project progresses, the DTTT will follow the successful implementation of each business's sustainability actions closely. A dedicated podcast series will be launched next year to amplify the impact of these innovations and share learning across Europe's tourism sector. Documenting both triumphs and challenges, the podcast aims to inspire and guide other SMEs embarking on their own sustainability journeys, demonstrating that transformative change is achievable within realistic resource constraints.
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