Peru is on a roll. It's been four years since my last visit, and I've spent a week experiencing a staggering amount of growth in development and tourism since then. I am convinced that the next four years will bring even more growth to this amazing country.

Tourism is Peru's 3rd largest industry behind mining and fishing, representing 7% of GDP and is the country's fastest growing industry. Over the last 5 years, tourism has grown at an annual rate of 25%, faster than any other country in South America. The Peruvian government has allocated significant resources to travel via their promotion institution, Prom Peru, while the private sector and academia give a considerable "share of mind" to tourism with some of the best and brightest working in and/or studying tourism and hospitality at accredited programs like the one at Universidad San Ignacio de Loyola.

I was recently invited to speak at the Second Annual International Symposium on International Tourism, an event organized by Rainforest Alliance, the Swiss Import Promotion Programme, Prom Peru and the University of St. Ignatius Loyola. The objective of the event was to provide local suppliers with strategic tools to better implement and manage destination marketing and sustainable travel development.

At MercuryCSC, a tourism marketing agency, we specialize in connecting brands and destinations with travelers who value authentic places and immersive experiences, a segment that is known as the Geotraveler. To be successful in reaching Geotravelers, we maintain that travel-oriented brands must integrate sustainability into the business itself.

It's not the primary reason these folks travel, nor is it the most important criteria for them when purchasing travel. Authenticity and experiential travel (despite these terms' march toward cliché status) are still the key purchase drivers for the higher-end, active Geotraveler. This fact can be something of a shock to sustainable travel practitioners, who mistake it as an argument against sustainability. In fact, the opposite is true.

The educated, active traveler has evolved a resistance to our industry's attempt at promoting our "greenness." After years of greenwashing, they no longer trust our claims, or at least feel less inclined to rely solely on what we say about ourselves. Instead, they rely on their peers and their own experiences on the ground. They are empowered to see for themselves and inquire the staff, guides and receptionists directly, and then they share those personally recorded observations with others.

"But Alexi!" you might say. "Most travelers aren't experts in sustainable tourism. They don't know who or what is sustainable and what's not."

While that's true, it's also a pretty weak excuse. One doesn't have to be an expert to figure out that there's no recycling program or nothing locally grown on the menu. In many cases, we're not doing the simple things to be sustainable. Get this base-level sustainability in order, and then we can talk about more complex, behind-the-scenes initiatives that might necessitate some explanation to your guests.

The responsibility and opportunity for sustainable travel has shifted squarely to the supplier of the experience, not the marketer. Rather than fighting it, as an industry we should be celebrating it. Our core consumers are ignoring the slickness with which we say we are sustainable, and instead seeing for themselves. As a service industry that merchandises experiences as opposed to stuff, tourism is well positioned to benefit from this shift in consumer savvy.

So stop waiting for a slick marketing plan to back it up before implementing simple sustainability initiatives. Your customers will take notice, I promise.