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The GSTC Criteria as a touchstone for tourism businesses and destinations

  • Published on January 8, 2018
Since 2007, the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) has been operating as a worldwide coalition that aims to foster understanding of sustainable tourism practices, using the GSTC Criteria as the framework for universal sustainable tourism principles. The GSTC Criteria, which serve as the foundation for GSTC’s role as the global Accreditation Body for Certification Programs for sustainable accommodations, tour operators, and destinations, is centered around four sustainability pillars.
GSTC Criteria are also composed of two subsets of performance indicators for hotels and tour operators; and the GSTC Destination Criteria, focused on the sustainable management of tourism destinations. (1) The GSTC-Industry Criteria were revised for the third time in December 2016: a framework was created to open the possibility of creating future versions specific to other subsectors, such as MICE, Cruise, or attractions, or other subsectors, though we do not have specific plans in place for any of those. The name of GSTC Hotel and Tour Operator Criteria changed to GSTC Industry Criteria. The performance indicators were separated and distinct sets for hotels/accommodations from tour operators were made. (2) The GSTC Criteria for destinations has been tested since 2012: Destination certification is relatively new and there are not a large number of adopters as yet. While more than 200 hotel certification schemes exist, there are fewer than five for destinations. GSTC is engaged with all of the credible certifiers working in SCP for destinations. The GSTC Destination Criteria have impacted SCP in far greater ways than through certification at this point. Standards are firstly used as a basis for training and awareness-raising. On the policymaking side, the Ministry of Tourism of Indonesia created national destination sustainability standards that were based on the GSTC criteria and gained GSTC Recognition, and they’re now applying these in destinations throughout Indonesia in the hopes of creating a national certification scheme. That has involved a major amount of training of destination managers throughout the country. Similar initiatives are underway in Thailand, and in Korea there were city standards for sustainability that started being developed in 2016, and they’re making plans to apply those in urban tourism. Mexico, India and Ecuador have developed national standards based on the GSTC criteria, though in both cases we look forward to more tangible applications of the standards.

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