‘Responsible’ tourism is all the rage nowadays. Parallel to the offer commercialized by specialized tour operators on the sustainable niche, traditional tour-operators have also begun to claim the sustainability of their offer. One can henceforth ponder on the legitimacy of the names they appropriate. The aim of the study is to assess the sustainability of their offer and eventually their legitimacy in claiming themselves to be responsible.

The survey was carried out among 18 French traditional and 10 (in fact more because of regrouping) specialized tour operators on the internet sites and their catalogue perusals. Results shows that various actions have been undertaken, relayed by communication, to promote an environment-friendly sustainable tourism in the broad sense of the term. Awareness is therefore genuine; it remains nonetheless all too often symbolic. The lack of transparency displayed by tour operators makes it hard to fathom for the ill-informed traveller.