"Benidorm is a good example of tourism management - four million people visit the resort every year, and stay in a small 10km radius in high rise hotels," says Leo Hickman, author of "The Final Call: In Search of the True Cost of Our Holidays".

"Tourism clusters or hubs like this are the model for more responsible travel. By staying in tourist hotspots like Benidorm or Cancun, holidaymakers are lessening their environmental impact through improved economies of scale," he told a travel industry conference in Portugal at the weekend.

But not everyone agrees. Jono Vernon-Powell, managing director of Nomadic Thoughts, a company that organises mostly long-haul bespoke holidays, argues that large-scale tourism destinations are frequently mismanaged.

He told Times Online: "There is a diseconomy of scale if it is managed wrongly and doesn't benefit the local area. Getting more people using the same resources, like one swimming pool, may be efficient but there are other questions you need to ask, such as whether staff are being treated properly, not just water useage."

Hickman argues that in resource terms many high-end tourists to Spain are doing more damage. "The golf courses and the villas with their kidney shaped pools in the Costas are the greatest threat in Spain," he told the Association of Independent Tour Operators conference.

"Only the top 15 per cent of UK travellers are the real 'binge flyers'; people who take perhaps ten flights a year. Those who go to Spain for their annual two-week holiday are not having anywhere near the same environmental impact."

Borneo or Benidorm?

Hickman also criticises globetrotters who seek out far-flung destinations to get away from the crowds. "People who go to the far corners of the world, like Borneo, are dragging these problems with them," he says.

Opposing this, Wanderlust editor Dan Linstead used the example of Borneo as a tourism destination that is being managed responsibly, and where the interest in orang-utans from tourists isencouraging the government to preserve the species.

"Borneo has infrastructure in its infancy," he told Times Online, "a relatively small number of tourists go and impact far less on the local environment and culture than in Benidorm where all Spanish culture has been squashed by the fish and chips brigade"

Linstead added: "The type of tourism in emerging destinations like Borneo will tend to give more money back to local businesses and individuals rather than feather the nest of some international hotel or travel company.

"Benidorm is the protoype for tourism development that has been mismanaged, it is not a beacon for the rest of the world to follow," said Linstead.

Limit long-haul travel

Hickman accepts that many developing world countries depend on tourism for a large part of their GDP, but said British tourists should still limit trips to these destinations.

"I advocate the 'Goldilocks' approach to travel," he told Times Online, "by which we alternate our holidays, taking a long haul trip one year, mid haul another year, perhaps somewhere accessible by rail, and holidaying locally the next year."

Hickman put the onus on travel companies to remove the most environmentally-damaging holidays from their brochures and websites. He said travel companies should look into "choice editing", a practice adopted in the supermarket sector, whereby some companies, such as M&S, select only environmentally and socially responsible products to sell, rather than the Tesco approach of offering the full range of products.

"We have to get away from this idea that choice is good and stop batting responsibility to the consumers to make the informed choice," he told Times Online.

His comments were made during the annual conference of the Association of Independent Tour Operators, whose theme this year is whether the travel industry can be a force for positive environmental and social development.

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