A few days ago, it posted something about green tourism that goes beyond the usual saying nothing, and instead actively promotes the wrong things. The issue at hand is that the greenest way to do tourism is to avoid flying and driving. So environmentally sustainable tourism means tourism that does not involve flying or driving. From Europe, this invariably means flying long distances, and then getting around by taxi in a biome that Europe does not have, usually a tropical climate.
The more hardcore greens talk about night trains so that they can do those all-rail trips to more distant parts of Europe. People who believe that the Union might be able to do something instead hold out for high-speed trains. For example, it could help advertise intra-European attractions that could be done by rail.
At longer range, it could be helping promote circuits of travel entirely by rail. This could be adapted to rail circuits, perhaps with some promotional deals. This is a rather urban route; circuits that include non-urban rail destinations like Saxon Switzerland or the Black Forest are also viable, but the more destinations are added, the smaller the circuit can be. There are trains in Europe to empty comparably places of great beauty β watched many cab videos on YouTube of trains through Sweden, Norway, and Switzerland β so you can still eco-tourist to the deep green woods by passenger rail.
And they do make electric motor vehicles, so if you have to take a battery shuttle bus or rental car a few kilometers to reach an attraction or hiking train not at the station, that seems like a pretty green eco-vacation. Those places exist, but they are not promoted as much as people who want to talk the green talk should. More importantly, there are a lot of vacations that have nothing to do with green that still could be done via train if only those who should make trains better fixed some issues.
If you want tourists to use rail you need to be flexible for their plans which often are not carefully timetabled. That means tickets that can get you on whatever train happens to be there when you finish whatever you are doing, and the train is frequent enough that you can count on it not being too long before the next train arrives. Not too long can still be every half an hour β tourists have more flexibility to check out nearby things if the train closes the doors just as they arrive on the platform so long as there are things to do nearby.
