Voluntary standards help travel suppliers around the world meet increasing consumer demand for products and services that will have positive effects on communities and the environment BARCELONA, Spain, Oct. 6
BARCELONA, Spain, Oct. 6 /PRNewswire/ -- United Nations Foundation
Founder and Chairman Ted Turner joined the Rainforest Alliance, the United
Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations World Tourism
Organization (UNWTO) today to announce the first-ever globally relevant
sustainable tourism criteria at the IUCN World Conservation Congress. The new
criteria -- based on thousands of best practices culled from the existing
standards currently in use around the world -- were developed to offer a
common framework to guide the emerging practice of sustainable tourism and to
help businesses, consumers, governments, non-governmental organizations and
education institutions to ensure that tourism helps, rather than harms, local
communities and the environment.
"Sustainability is just like the old business adage: 'you don't encroach
on the principal, you live off the interest'," said Turner. "Unfortunately, up
to this point, the travel industry and tourists haven't had a common framework
to let them know if they're really living up to that maxim. But the Global
Sustainable Tourism Criteria (GSTC) will change that. This is a win-win
initiative -- good for the environment and good for the world's tourism
industry."
"Tourism is one of the fastest growing industries and a strong contributor
to sustainable development and poverty alleviation," said Francesco
Frangialli, Secretary-General of the United Nations World Tourism
Organization. "Over 900 million international tourists traveled last year and
UNWTO forecasts 1.6 billion tourists by the year 2020. In order to minimize
the negative impacts of this growth, sustainability should translate from
words to facts, and be an imperative for all tourism stakeholders. The GSTC
initiative will undoubtedly constitute a major reference point for the entire
tourism sector and an important step in making sustainability an inherent part
of tourism development."
The criteria were developed by the Partnership for Global Sustainable
Tourism Criteria (GSTC Partnership), a new coalition of 27 organizations that
includes tourism leaders from the private, public and not-for-profit sectors.
Over the past 15 months, the partnership consulted with sustainability experts
and the tourism industry and reviewed more than 60 existing certification and
voluntary sets of criteria already being implemented around the globe. In all,
more than 4,500 criteria have been analyzed and more than 80,000 people,
including conservationists, industry leaders, governmental authorities and UN
bodies, have been invited to comment on the resulting criteria.
"Consumers deserve widely accepted standards to distinguish green from
greenwashed. These criteria will allow true certification of sustainable
practices in hotels and resorts as well as other travel suppliers," said Jeff
Glueck, chief marketing officer of Travelocity/Sabre, a member of the GSTC
Partnership. "They will give travelers confidence that they can make choices
to help the sustainability cause. They also will help the forward-thinking
suppliers who deserve credit for doing things right."
Available at www.SustainableTourismCriteria.org, the criteria focus on
four areas experts recommend as the most critical aspects of sustainable
tourism: maximizing tourism's social and economic benefits to local
communities; reducing negative impacts on cultural heritage; reducing harm to
local environments; and planning for sustainability. The GSTC Partnership is
developing educational materials and technical tools to guide hotels and tour
operators in implementing the criteria.
"The American Society of Travel Agents feels it especially important to be
a part of this global partnership that is leading the way in defining once and
for all what it means to be a sustainable travel company," said William
Maloney, Chief Operating Officer for ASTA. "As an organization with its own
Green Member program, it's incumbent upon us to ensure that our steps toward a
travel retailers' green initiative were in sync with responsible global
developments. The criteria will provide our members with much-needed
guidelines for assessing future business partners' commitment to sustainable
tourism while offering consumers clear and reliable information about the
travel choices they make."
"The Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria initiative is about steering the
industry onto a truly sustainable path -- one that echoes to the challenge of
our time: namely the fostering and federating of a global Green Economy that
thrives on the interest rather than the capital of our economically-important
nature-based assets," said Achim Steiner, United Nations Under-Secretary
General and Executive Director, United Nations Environment Programme.
"The Rainforest Alliance celebrates the outcomes of the GSTC Partnership,
which we believe will help the tourism industry put itself on a sustainable
path," said Tensie Whelan, Executive Director of the Rainforest Alliance. "The
Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria that have been developed will shape the
minimum requirements that the Sustainable Tourism Stewardship Council will
demand from accredited certification programs and help travelers have the
assurance that they are helping, not harming, the environment."
"The GSTC Partnership is a collaborative effort to provide a much needed
common framework and understanding of sustainable tourism practices," said
Janna Morrison, Senior Vice President of Corporate Social Responsibility at
Choice Hotels International. "Tourism is an important and growing industry
that supports sustainability and will clearly benefit from this common
framework. Ultimately this effort will result in a positive impact on
communities and the environment."
"Expedia is proud to support the Partnership for Global Sustainable
Tourism Criteria and committed to using these criteria as a standard for
designating a travel partner 'sustainable'," said Paul Brown, President
Expedia Partner Services Group and Expedia North America. "Consumers today are
more motivated than ever to incorporate sustainable practices into their
lives, at Expedia we are motivated as well and dedicated to being a leader in
sustainable travel. We're proud of our travel partners -- hotels and tour
operators -- who are already excelling in this area, and hopeful that they
will set the bar for their peers around the world. We hope that our travelers
will see and appreciate the hard work our partners go through to fulfill these
criteria and reach the benchmark of sustainability."
About the Partnership for Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria
The Partnership for Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria (GSTC Partnership)
is a coalition of 27 organizations working together to foster increased
understanding of sustainable tourism practices and the adoption of universal
sustainable tourism principles. The Partnership was initiated by the
Rainforest Alliance, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the
United Nations Foundation, and the United Nations World Tourism Organization
(UNWTO). These criteria will be the minimum standard that any tourism business
should aspire to reach in order to protect and sustain the world's natural and
cultural resources while ensuring tourism meets its potential as a tool for
poverty alleviation. To learn more, visit www.SustainableTourismCriteria.org.
Additional members of the GSTC Partnership Steering Committee are the
American Hotel & Lodging Association (AH&LA), American Society of Travel
Agents (ASTA), Caribbean Alliance for Sustainable Tourism (CAST), Choice
Hotels, Conde Nast Traveler, Conservation International (CI), ECOTRANS,
Expedia, Inc., Federation of Tour Operators (FTO), HM Design, Hyatt Hotels and
Resorts, Instituto do Hospitalidade, International Hotel & Restaurant
Association (IH&RA), the International Council on Monuments and Sites
(ICOMOS), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN),
Kenyan Ecotourism Society, the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological
Diversity (SCBD), Solimar International, Sustainable Travel International
(STI), The International Ecotourism Society (TIES), Tourism Concern,
Travelocity/Sabre, and VISIT.
SOURCE United Nations Foundation
