| dc.description.abstract | This thesis aims to perform a Life Cycle Assessment in order to explore environmental impacts associated with a vacation package. It identified the phases of the holiday that generated the largest impact, the most significant impact categories and quantified the impacts generated.
The results of LCA have demonstrated that impacts from the vacation package occur in all of the eighteen midpoint impact categories, with the largest contributions from air travel and electricity consumption. Further assessment has shown that there are variations in impacts (specifically, GHG emissions), depending on the destination and the length of stay. At the same time, it has been found that GHG emissions from air travel are not directly proportional to the distance flown. Overall, the study has confirmed that viewing tourism as low impact industry is misleading.
Significant gaps in tourism related research and data were identified. While a relatively large number of studies focused on impacts from air travel, the research on the hotel stay and tourist activities is much more limited. Literature research also showed that there are a very few studies related to use of LCA in tourism and specifically LCA of a holiday package. It was found that several important elements of the vacation package were not covered enough in the literature such as for example tourist activities, waste generation, and food consumption.
Possibilities and barriers for future research were also identified. It was suggested that more studies on different types of vacation packages would make results of impact assessment more representative. However, in order to conduct comprehensive LCAs of holiday packages, current major gaps in available data need to be filled. | |
