Let’s help you
plan your journey
Explore responsibly, discover offbeat places, guided by locals, rooted in culture.
Let’s help you
plan your journey
Explore responsibly, discover offbeat places, guided by locals, rooted in culture.
Soumen Bhowmick
A slow traveller, road trip enthusiast, Soumen travels to understand how places breathe beyond maps and itineraries. A road tripper at heart, he finds meaning in country roads, small conversations, changing landscapes, and the quiet stories that unfold between destinations. That same instinct now shapes how he designs journeys for organisations, MICE, brand drives, product launches and CSR initiatives built the same way: around people, place and what's real, not what's scripted.
Sustainable travel in India has wide support, but it is often unclear which choices on a trip actually help. In a 2026 survey of 1,000 Indian travellers, 74% said people must act now to protect the planet, but only 35% said sustainability consistently influences their travel decisions. Many of the choices travellers make most often also make the trip better for them, like going off-season to avoid crowds, and they ease the pressure on busy places too.
A steel bottle saves one plastic bottle at a time. Where you sleep and eat decides whether a family in the hills earns anything from your visit. The week you arrive can decide whether a small hill town has enough water left for its own people. Two big surveys from 2026 show how much Indian travellers care about waste, local incomes and crowds, and how often that care changes what they book.
India is tied third in Asia for how much travellers care about sustainability. In Agoda's 2026 survey, 88% of Indian travellers said sustainability is important when they choose a trip. Only Thailand, at 95%, and Indonesia, at 93%, scored higher. Malaysia matched India at 88%. Across Asia, the figure rose from 68% in 2025 to 77%.
The Agoda survey is small. It asked 1,036 people across eight countries and territories in Asia, so the figure for each one rests on a small group. The Booking.com survey is bigger. It asked 1,000 people in India in January 2026, out of 32,500 people in 35 countries and territories. In that survey, 96% said more sustainable travel is important or very important to them.
So both surveys agree that almost every Indian traveller says sustainability matters. Between them, the two surveys also asked what people want their travel to do for a place, and how often that wish changes a booking. Those answers matter more than the ranking, because they show which choices reach the people who live where you travel.
In Agoda's survey, money for local people came first for Indian travellers. Asked which result matters most, 39% chose making sure their travel money helps local communities. Next came protecting nature and wildlife, at 33%, and then feeling closer to the place, at 16%.
Travellers in India put local people first more often than travellers across Asia as a whole, where 29% chose them. The same survey asked what kind of sustainable trip people want. The top answer in India, at 35%, was a tour that protects nature and helps local people. Only 16% chose a hotel with a green certificate.
In plain words, the biggest group puts people first. In practice, that means the family that runs the guesthouse and the guide from the next village. Nature and wildlife come a close second. Certified hotels come far behind both.
The Booking.com survey shows support falling at each step, from what people believe to what they do. Nearly three in four Indian travellers, 74%, said people must act now to protect the planet. Almost as many, 72%, are more determined to travel sustainably than they were a year ago. More than half, 58%, want to leave the places they visit better than they found them.
The numbers drop when the questions turn to choices. Nearly half, 47%, try to make more sustainable choices whenever they can. Just over a third, 35%, say sustainability consistently influences the decisions they make on a trip. That is less than half the share who say people must act now.
The same survey found something hopeful too. In all, 71% said that seeing green habits on a trip makes them want to follow those habits at home. So what a traveller sees in a homestay or a village kitchen can change how they live long after they get back.
Discounts would move many Indian travellers towards more sustainable choices. Booking.com found that 47% would travel more sustainably if they were offered a discount or some other saving. And 45% want advice on travelling sustainably on a budget. Money comes up again and again in these answers.
The second problem is not knowing what counts. In the same survey, 41% want clearer facts on what makes one option more sustainable than another. Nearly two in three, 65%, think travel websites and apps should all use the same green certificates. And 40% want to know the best times to travel to avoid crowds.
Every one of these answers asks for help with the booking itself. People want a lower price, a clear label or a better date. These travellers are not asking to be told to care, because they already say they do. What they are missing is a choice they can see clearly and pay for.
A green badge on a booking site is only as useful as the check behind it. Until 2024, Booking.com showed its own Travel Sustainable badge on more than 500,000 places to stay. That year the consumer regulator in the Netherlands said the badge could wrongly suggest that travelling is sustainable. Booking.com dropped it.
Now the site shows a label only when an outside body has certified the place. When the change was made, just over 16,500 places had such a certificate to show. That is about one in thirty of the places that had carried the old badge. Most of the old badges had never been checked by anyone outside the company.
Indian travellers still want labels they can trust. In the Booking.com survey, 70% of Indian travellers said they plan to look for a place to stay with a green certificate. What a certificate checks depends on who gave it. Certificates based on the rules of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council also check what a place does for local people.
In India, millennials are the age group most likely to say they want to travel more sustainably. In the Booking.com survey, 88% of millennials in India said so, against 82% of Gen Z and 77% of Gen X. The survey counted people aged 18 to 28 as Gen Z, and people aged 29 to 44 as millennials.
Older travellers lead on everyday habits. Among those planning more sustainable trips, 55% of Gen X plan to cut waste by recycling and saying no to single-use items. Only 44% of Gen Z plan the same. Gen X also leads on saving power, at 57%, and on eating local food in season, at 60%.
Younger travellers lean towards meeting people. In India, 40% of millennials and 39% of Gen Z plan tours that show them local culture, against 35% of Gen X. Across all 35 countries and territories, 31% of Gen Z had been on a tour where they met indigenous people, against 18% of those aged 61 and over. Each age group cares in its own way, and both ways help.
Carrying a bottle you can refill is one of the most common habits among Indian travellers. Booking.com found that between 53% and 56% of each age group plan to carry one. Around half plan to save power on their trips. These habits are easy to keep and easy to see.
A refilled bottle is one less plastic bottle for a mountain village to collect and carry away. Switching off the air conditioner when you go out saves a small family guesthouse money on its power bill. Neither habit costs the traveller anything.
These habits do not decide who earns from a trip, or how crowded a place gets. Both depend on where you stay, who you pay and when you go. A traveller can refill a bottle every day of a trip and still spend almost nothing with the people who live there.
Eating local food is the habit Indian travellers are most likely to keep on a trip. In the Booking.com survey, 60% of Gen X, 59% of millennials and 55% of Gen Z plan to eat local food in season. Buying from small independent shops comes close, at 48% to 49% in each age group.
These choices put money into local hands at every meal and every purchase. The owner of the roadside dhaba, the family making pickles and the weaver down the lane all earn from them. A meal made from what the district grows also teaches you how people in a place farm, cook and celebrate.
When Agoda asked Indian travellers about the biggest benefit of tourism, 53% said it helps local businesses grow. Local food and local shops are the simplest way to act on that belief. They are open to every traveller on every trip, whatever the budget.
Money from a trip stays in a place when the people you pay live there. A room, a meal, a driver and a guide each pay somebody. Whether that somebody is local is usually decided when the trip is planned. Those are the choices in a plan that decide who gets paid. They matter to a village far more than a refilled bottle does.
Homestays show the difference most clearly. Families in Ladakh's snow leopard villages have hosted visitors since 2002, and a tenth of what guests pay goes into a village fund. Snow leopards sometimes kill the animals these families herd. A paying guest helps cover that loss.
Some of these village homestays are in the Sham valley, which a journey along the Indus through Ladakh passes through. A night there pays a family directly, and the family decides how to spend it. The same night that pays a hotel owned elsewhere can pay a herding family instead.
Going somewhere less crowded is one of the choices Indian travellers most want to make. In the Booking.com survey, 49% want to see places before they become too popular, and 47% plan to avoid crowded ones. And 45% believe that visiting less known places does less harm to nature.
Some less known places are short of the basics that visitors need. Ladakh named Kumik, a village in Zanskar, its first heritage village in September 2026. By then, families there had already left their homes because the water was running out. More visitors would draw on the same shrinking supply.
Becoming well known brings a different problem. A village in Meghalaya became famous as India's cleanest. The crowds that followed led it to limit day visitors at weekends. A visit to a quiet place helps most when the group is small and the money goes to local hosts.
Off-season travel helps the traveller and the place at the same time. Booking.com asked Indian travellers why they would travel outside the busy season. The top reason, at 71%, was to avoid crowds. Next came easier bookings for rooms and sights, at 68%, then easing the pressure on busy places, at 55%, and then saving money, at 51%.
Across Asia, travelling outside the peak was the most common sustainable choice in the Agoda survey, at 48%. The reason is easy to see. The traveller gets a calmer trip and often a cheaper room. The place gets its visitors in weeks when it has the space and the staff to look after them.
Busy weeks are not only about the season, because a festival changes a place for weeks either side of its date. An ordinary weekday outside a festival or a holiday week is one of the easiest choices a traveller can make for a place. A weekday trip needs nothing special, only dates you can move.
Extreme heat is already changing where and when Indian travellers go. Booking.com found that 63% of travellers in India had changed or cancelled a trip in the past year because of the weather. Almost six in ten, 59%, said some places are now too hot to visit. And 62% have taken places off their wish lists because of the climate.
Many travellers now think about the weather before they choose a place. In the same survey, 71% said they weigh climate risks when they pick where to go. A third, 33%, are looking for cooler places. Across all 35 countries and territories in the survey, 74% said they think about extreme weather when choosing where to travel.
In India, a cooler place usually means a hill town. The busiest weeks in many hill towns fall in May and June, when the plains are at their hottest. In 2018, those same weeks left Shimla without enough water for its own people.
Shimla shows what a busy summer can do to a hill town. In late May 2018, the town needed about 45 million litres of water a day in the tourist season. It had about 23 million. Most of the town got water only once in eight days, and people waited for hours at public taps and for tankers.
Residents asked tourists to skip the town that season, and the town's officials made the same appeal. Hotels lost bookings as the news spread. In peak summer, about 200,000 people who live in Shimla are joined by more than 66,000 tourists. Every one of those tourists needs water for a shower and a clean room.
As summers get hotter, more travellers are likely to head for the hills. Going in a week when a hill town is less full is kinder to the people who live there, and calmer for the people who visit. A quieter week also means the tap in your room is not using water that a family down the road was waiting for.
Sustainable travel in India works best when the choice that is better for the place is also the easier choice for you. The choices Indian travellers make most often already give them something back. Going off-season gives them a quieter week and often a cheaper room. Eating local gives them the food of the place they came to see, and neither choice asks them to give up anything.
The harder choices are the ones you cannot see from a booking page. They include who owns the stay and whether the town has water to spare that week. A well-planned journey makes those choices before anyone leaves home. Planning a trip so that the fair choice is also the easy one is what sits behind Care-Based Travel.
What I take from these surveys is simple. Most Indian travellers already care about the places they visit. They are asking for choices that are clear and fairly priced. Before you book, ask who runs the place you will sleep in, and choose a week when the place is not full.
Thailand, in Agoda's 2026 survey. There, 95% of people said sustainability matters when they choose a trip, ahead of Indonesia at 93%. India and Malaysia were tied third at 88%.
Almost all of them. Booking.com asked 1,000 Indian travellers in 2026, and 96% said more sustainable travel was important or very important to them. The smaller Agoda survey put the Indian figure at 88%.
Not in every way. In the Booking.com survey, 82% of Gen Z want to travel more sustainably, against 88% of millennials. Gen X leads on everyday habits such as cutting waste, while younger travellers are more likely to choose tours that show them local culture.
That depends on who gave it. Booking.com dropped its own Travel Sustainable badge in 2024, after a regulator in the Netherlands said it could mislead. The site now shows only certificates from outside bodies, which just over 16,500 places had when the change was made.
It helps, and more than half of Indian travellers plan to carry one. But a bottle does not change who earns money from your trip. That depends on where you stay and who you pay.
It can be, if the group is small and the money goes to local hosts. Some quiet places are short of water, as Kumik in Zanskar shows, so a rush of visitors can hurt them. In the Booking.com survey, 45% of travellers in India believed less known places do less harm to nature.
It spreads visitors across the year, so places are not overwhelmed in a few busy weeks. It suits travellers as well. In the Booking.com survey, Indians said off-season trips mean fewer crowds, easier bookings and lower costs.
Yes, it already has. In the Booking.com survey, 63% of Indian travellers had changed or cancelled a trip in the past year because of the weather. Almost six in ten said some places are now too hot to visit, and a third are looking for cooler places.
The town ran short of water in the busy summer season. It needed about 45 million litres a day and had about 23 million, and most of the town got water once in eight days. The town's officials and the people who lived there asked visitors to stay away.
Lower prices and clearer facts, going by the Booking.com survey. There, 47% said a discount would push them to travel more sustainably, and 45% want advice on travelling sustainably on a budget. And 41% want clearer facts on what makes one option more sustainable than another.