The luxury traveller has changed, and quietly. Not so long ago, sustainability was a word attached to budget travel and a certain amount of doing without. That association has fallen away. At the top of the market, guests now ask how a villa is powered and where its food is sourced, and plenty want to know what happens to the waste as well. The answers increasingly shape where they choose to stay. Privadia, which places high-end travellers across the Mediterranean, puts it plainly: demand for the genuinely sustainable stay has climbed year on year, and nothing about that looks like slowing.

What makes it interesting is where this is happening. The same glamorous islands that built their names on parties and yachts, Ibiza and Mallorca among them, along with Mykonos and the Turkish resort town of Kalkan, all have a serious conservation story running beneath the surface. The conscious traveller has started to seek it out.

Four famous destinations with a quieter, greener side

Ibiza is the obvious example of a place misjudged. Away from the clubs, the sea around the island is protected by law. The reason is a plant. Vast meadows of Posidonia seagrass grow between Ibiza and Formentera, they hold UNESCO World Heritage status, and they earn it. That seagrass is what keeps Ibiza’s water so absurdly clear, and it gives shelter to a huge amount of marine life besides. Boats are asked not to anchor on the meadows at all. Meanwhile the north around San Juan is farmland and organic smallholdings, and a good number of the island’s best kitchens now cook straight from what those farms grow. You would never guess any of it from a night in Playa d’en Bossa.

Mallorca…

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