Tourism Chiefs Arrive at COP31 Demanding Results, Not Fresh Pledges

COP31 opens in Antalya, Türkiye, on November 9, and the travel industry's sustainability leads are arriving with one demand: show us the receipts. Five years after the Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism pulled in more than 900 signatories, operators say they have plenty of commitments and almost no shared proof of what those commitments achieved.

The 31st United Nations Climate Change Conference runs November 9 to 20, co-hosted with Australia. Organizers are billing it as the "implementation COP" — a label earned the hard way, after parties at COP30 in Belém, Brazil, failed to agree on a path forward last year. The Brazilian COP30 presidency had promised to publish plans for moving away from fossil fuels and protecting forests before this round of talks, and the voluntary roadmaps released Tuesday are designed to help policymakers translate existing climate commitments into national policies, investments and measurable results.

What does tourism want from Antalya?

Tourism holds a thematic slot on November 18, its third consecutive year on the COP agenda, this time inside a day focused on human and social development. Sustainability executives at three of the sector's biggest names told Skift what they expect — and it isn't another framework.

Susanne Etti of Intrepid Travel said the sector needs electrification and falling emissions, "not more commitments, targets, or frameworks." She also argued that resilience, adaptation and loss and damage funding have become more urgent after a year marked by extreme heat, wildfires and flooding — weather events that hit tour operators' destinations directly.

Radisson Hotel Group's Sven Wiltink homed in on the measurement problem. The industry measures emissions, water, energy and waste inconsistently, he said, and without common metrics "comparisons are meaningless and claims remain unverifiable." That gap matters commercially: unverifiable claims are increasingly a regulatory and distribution risk for sellers of travel as greenwashing scrutiny tightens.

Booking Holdings' Danielle D'Silva struck a similar tone, saying the industry can do more on both adaptation and emissions reductions. The takeaway: the big spenders in travel distribution want evidence — emissions down, electrification delivered, adaptation funded — not new pledge cards.

Why the Glasgow Declaration is getting a rewrite

COP31 also marks five years since the Glasgow Declaration, which has attracted more than 900 signatories but produced little comparable data on what they've achieved. Revised operational guidelines for the declaration land at the conference. Co-author Jeremy Smith said the aim is to lower the measurement and reporting burden — the very burden operators cite as a barrier — and to bring in companies that have so far stayed out.

The rewrite attempts to answer the sector's core split: should tourism measure better first, or act faster first? Wiltink's complaint about inconsistent metrics points one way; Etti's demand for electrification now points the other. The revised guidelines are an effort to make both camps verifiable without drowning smaller players in reporting.

Whether Antalya delivers anything measurable — new fossil fuel transition plans, adaptation finance, or simply agreed metrics — will determine if the "implementation COP" label survives contact with the negotiations.