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Governments, hotels and major tourism operators must take the lead in boosting environmentally friendly tourism, which has yet to make a major impact on the industry, experts said at a recent United Nations-backed conference on climate change.

The industry has been slow to adopt sustainable environmental practices because it is fragmented and includes small operators preoccupied with earning a living rather than thinking about preserving the environment, they said.

That's why big players such as governments, airlines and hotels should take the lead, according to industry experts attending the final day of the Business Summit for the Environment in Singapore.

"A lot of the people who are in tourism, they are very poor people from villages," said Anthony Wong, managing director of Malaysia-based Asian Overland Services Tours and Travel.

"They are small operators - they can be boat operators, they can be small hotel operators. These people don't have a worldwide view. They are not aware of the negative side of travel," he said.

"What they want to do is just earn a living ... They cannot think too deep, too wide. So it is up to the association, the government and the big players to lead and push it down to the suppliers, the agents, the transport operators," Wong said.

More than 100 million people are employed in the tourism industry in the Asia Pacific region, he said.

Wong, also on the board of the Pacific Asia Travel Association, said increasing awareness of climate change could push the tourism industry to accelerate acceptance of green practices.

But this might take another 20 years, he added.

"We have to start now. It is not a happy situation," he said.

Rachel Dodds, a specialist in sustainable tourism and assistant professor at Ryerson University in Toronto, said one of the industry's challenges was that once a development was built, it could not easily be undone.

Many industry players are also focused on earnings.

But Dodds said the situation was changing because travellers increasingly want a more unique holiday experience.

"They don't want to sit on the beach with 5,000 other people. They want something clean," she said.

"You can have the best service in a hotel ... but if you go outside and the beach is dirty, there is no experience."

The cruise business is one tourism sector in which environmental standards could be implemented, Dodds said, citing reports of ships dumping sewage at sea.

She pointed to a study showing that of the 100 worst companies in the United States in terms of environmental stewardship, six were tourism firms - and five of those were cruise lines.

As a late bloomer in the industry, China is in a position to lead the way for responsible tourism development, said Claire Chiang, senior vice-president of Singapore-based luxury resort developer Banyan Tree Holdings.

With 25 million people travelling to cities within the country each year, and its fast-paced economic growth, tourism in China could either help destroy the environment or preserve it, she told the conference.

"With them developing so late, they can learn all the bad practices, not repeat them and do better," Chiang said.