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On another occasions, foreigners stick to buying the earth in developing countries which pushes local prices up and can create it difficult for local people to find affordable housing. A single golf rate to cater for tourists in a country such as Thailand can require as many water as 60,000 villagers. A single hotel in some underdeveloped idyll can manufacture as many waste as an entire city of its original inhabitants.

Spending on international tourism has reached over US$500 billion (it is projected to quadruple over the following decade). So the pressure on governments and local communities to try to grab their share of the rapidly-expanding tourist pie — regardless of the social or another consequences - is intensifying.

At least one tour operator has already pulled out of Burma as a result of this campaign. Imaginative Traveller, one of the growing number of small-group, often adventure-oriented, independent travel companies, has cancelled all trips there before basic democratic rights are respected.

In general with similar little companies operating in this field (such as Explore, Exodus, Guerba and others), Imaginative Traveller prides itself on a responsible and ethical approach to tourism. These companies try to buy the goods and services they need locally, to respect the cultures and support the communities of the places they visit, and to leave few impact on the sights they take people to see. Others, most notably Earthwatch, which organises working vacation on environmental projects near the world, have created a growing new market for eco-tourism.

The pressure is also increasing on tour operators and tourists themselves to adopt a more responsible or eco-friendly approach to travel. The publishers of the Lonely Planet travel guides became one of the first targets of this growing commitment to ethical tourism this year when the campaign group Tourism Concern called for a boycott of its commodity. This followed Lonely Planets publication of a new manual to Burma in defiance of a call from the democratic opposition there for tourists to remain away because their money is helping to hold the military regime in strength.

Four-fifths of all international travel takes places as part of a package deal. Yet studies has shown that hardly 20% of all money spent by tourists on these vacation stays in the countries where they take seat. So travelling independently, or with tour companies that spend your money on local goods and services, does create a difference. In India, where independent or small-group travel using Indian-owned facilities is still the norm, near 60% of tourist spending stays in the country.

There is, unfortunately, a large hole in even the most ethical or eco-friendly approach to tourism. Or rather, there is a large hole — in the ozone layer - that international travel by air (and two thirds of all international travel is by air) is making bigger. Scientists evaluate that by 2015, air travel will be responsible for half of all ozone depletion.

When we discovered that CFC gases were the major reason of ozone depletion, we stopped using them in sprays and fridges. Getting an increasingly travel-hungry world to stop using planes might be many more difficult.