Cultivating Comprehensive Destination Stewardship with GSTC Criterion A4

Destination Stewardship Report – Vol. 3, No. 1 – Summer 2022

Sustainability in tourism destinations requires not only the commitment of government and nonprofit organizations, but also the work of the private sector to maintain places in ways such that they can be enjoyed for years to come. DMOs need to encourage that. Randy Durband, CEO of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council, explains how GSTC’s Destination Criterion A4 offers guidance.

Criterion A4: Enterprise Engagement and Sustainability Standards

Destination stewardship requires good public policy and strong private sector practices. The Destination Management Organization (DMO) has a role in both, not just the first.

The DMO needs to provide guidance and encouragement to the private sector to operate more sustainably. That is the focus here: the DMO encourages continuous improvement on the sustainability practices of the businesses that are directly serving the visitors.

What makes a destination “sustainable”? It’s public sector-provided infrastructure — roads, parks, clean and safe water, clean and efficient energy — and the preservation of natural and cultural heritage, but also the types of products and services produced and offered by businesses.

Sustainable consumption in tourism is far more than tangible products, such as food and souvenirs purchased by the visitor. Consumption in tourism includes more money and time spent on services than on physical products. Those services include accommodations, transportation, guiding and interpretation, and the attractions visited. A broad view of sustainable tourism products and services is needed, one that looks at the core elements that all visitors require.

A resort on Mexico’s Riviera Maya posts its allegiance to the UN’s SDGs. [Photo by Jonathan Tourtellot]

Businesses serve the visitor directly. Businesses operate the physical facilities and modes of transport that visitors use. They also provide most of the less tangible services and experiences.

Criterion A4 of the GSTC Destination Criteria and its Performance Indicators underscores that DMO’s must take an active role in engaging with the private sector. This is needed to encourage more sustainable forms of services and experiences. Let’s look at the text:

A4 Enterprise engagement and sustainability standards

The destination regularly informs tourism-related enterprises about sustainability issues and encourages and supports them in making their operations more sustainable. The destination promotes the adoption of sustainability standards, promoting the application of GSTC-I Recognized standards and GSTC-I Accredited certification schemes for tourism enterprises, where available. The destination publicizes a list of sustainability certified enterprises.

Performance Indicators for Criterion A4:

Evidence of regular communication of sustainability issues to tourism-related businesses (media, meetings, direct contact etc.).
Sustainability support and advice to tourism-related business – available and promoted.
Number and percentage of businesses certified against tourism sustainability standards (and whether GSTC recognised/accredited), with targets for wider outreach.
Evidence of promotion of certification schemes.
List of tourism-related certified enterprises, kept up to date.

This criterion calls for an active role by the DMO in encouraging and/or requiring businesses to operate more sustainably. DMOs can do so in a variety of ways:

Awareness-raising through seminars, newsletters, classroom training, etc.
Incentives for good performance, such as discounts in tourism promotion activities for businesses with evidence of sustainable practices
Subsidies for good performance
Mandates for good performance

In other words, carrots and sticks, with as many carrots as possible … but sticks when necessary.

Examples of carrots, that is, encouragement, incentives, and subsidies:

Costa Rica’s national government operates a tourism business certification scheme for sustainability, and provides discounts to certified businesses for presenting their business at international trade fairs and other forms of international promotion.
Singapore set a target that 60% of hotels gain certification to the GSTC framework by 2025 and are encouraging businesses to adhere to the goal in a variety of ways.
Jeju Island, a province in South Korea, set targets for full conversion to electric vehicles (EV’s) that included several years advance notice before an eventual mandate that will require all rental car companies to convert fully to EV’s in their fleets.

An example of mandates comes from Türkiye, where the Ministry formed an agency to develop and operate a Green Tourism program. Included in this is a mandate that all hotels in the country gain certification by GSTC-accredited Certification Bodies by 2030. Those hotels not in compliance will be subject to losing their business licenses enforced by Türkiye’s central government. But the mandate is softened by the implementation of a stepwise scheme. This allows for each hotel to climb a ladder to certification via two steps. The hotel provides evidence of compliance to the national standard at each step (the national standard complies with the GSTC Criteria formally through the GSTC Recognized program). This process must be completed between 2022 and 2030.

Wisconsin, USA, has a state-endorsed environmental program. [Photo courtesy of Wisconsin Department of Tourism]

Making It Verifiably Systemic

It’s useful to break down systematic approaches to sustainable tourism into these elements:

Attributes – such as greenhouse gasses, energy, plastic, fair labor practices, cultural heritage preservation, ecosystem conservation, animal welfare.
Measurement – as shorthand for measuring, evaluating, rating, scoring, and reporting.
Verification – providing evidence that you are managing and making improvements on the attributes you claim to be improving. This can include awards or certification, or any form of reporting that is reviewed to some degree by external and impartial parties – i.e., objectively verifiable. (Self-assessments or any form of “self-verification” are not truly verification — let’s call it “talking about yourself.”)

DMO’s should not be boastful if their local businesses are striving for improvement in only a very few attributes. “We recycle” is a wonderful claim, but are you doing anything else?

Are you measuring and benchmarking and rewarding improvement? Are you measuring how much actually gets recycled in those lovely bins scattered about? Are the businesses seeking external and impartial verification of their claims? The guests can see the recycle bins, but they cannot see back of house whether the sorting continues; that requires external verification through auditing.

All of these are essential.

And, let’s be honest: Even if a DMO is doing great work on complying with GSTC-D Section A on Sustainable Management, if they are not encouraging and rewarding excellence by the businesses within their jurisdiction, can they make any claims of sustainability as a destination? I think not. Criterion A4 is vital to the compliance of Section A in its entirety.

A “sustainable destination” should be a combination of both DMO and the private sector achieving this recognition together. In other words, the DMO and other public agencies must collectively score well on Section A of GSTC-D – AND the private sector should have gained high percentages of strong, meaningfully verified progress on their journey to sustainability. Hotels should have their buildings certified by LEED, BREEAM, or similar and their operations certified by a GSTC-Accredited Certification Body. Tour operators, agencies, and transport companies should have high percentages of clean energy vehicles in use and should be certified sustainable themselves. Other businesses are part of B-Corp, constantly working to increase their scores.

We at GSTC are working on systems to count hotels at destinations in order to determine the percentage that are certified sustainable. We’ll seek ways to do the same for Destination Management Company (DMC)’s, such as local inbound operators and transport providers. This relates directly to Performance Indicator “3” of Criterion A4.

Criterion A4 speaks to all of the above. How many of a destination’s businesses are seriously addressing what number of attributes? Are they properly measured, with external verification? Without such significant metrics, a destination’s claim to being “sustainable” rings rather hollow.

Contrasting Tourism Landscapes in Karnataka, India

The pandemic exposed the dangers of ‘tourism monocultures’ – dependence on one product only – versus a more holistic approach to tourism fare. Gayathri Hegde has been researching the differing tourism experiences of Dandeli and Joida, neighboring towns in Karnataka, southwestern India.

Amara homestay cottages decked in Warli paintings. Homestays such as this, combined with multicultural experiences, offer a resilient alternative to the risks inherent in over-exploiting a single adventure-tourism product. © Amrut Joshi

River Rafting Alone Does Not a Destination Make

The town of Dandeli, located in the serene, verdant green forests of Western Ghats in northern Karnataka, has become synonymous with ‘adventure tourism’ in the region, popularized as the river-rafting destination of southern India. Fueled by dam waters, the Kali River flows with robust furor, enthralling all visitors. The spike in tourists visiting this biodiversity hotspot brought considerable profits to tourism service providers, but it has also resulted in unchecked growth that has hampered the ecological and financial sustainability of this tourism model.

Cultivated terraces and wild forests of Joida testify to multiple layers of influence by man and nature. © Gayathri Hegde.

What was once a novelty experience has now been reduced to a gimmick in recent years. Rafting through the rapids was initially envisioned for a 12km stretch, which would allow the adventurer to have a complete experience of rafting through multiple rapids in the flowing river. However, to offer the experience to a larger number of visitors traveling on a smaller budget, the local tourism operators started offering the rafting experience for lower fees and a shorter distance. As a result, while the tourism experience in Dandeli has become more accessible across all economic classes of the society, the overall quality of the product has taken a massive hit.

In an attempt to cater to many, even the few are deprived of the delights of nature that this place truly has to offer. With no checks in place to regulate the tourism impacts, tourists are littering the area, and most service providers take no responsibility for restoring the disturbed places they leave behind. As a result, the once verdant landscape is now dotted with plastic and tin. The sensitive ecology is home to a multitude of flora and fauna that are endemic to the region. The unchecked spurt in tourism stands to upend their lifecycle.

Then, when the government banned water-sport activities as a preventive measure during Covid-19, many tourism service providers who had anchored their business model solely on adventure tourism took a major financial hit.

But what is unique about Dandeli? What can one take away from here? The actual potential of this place in the current tourism model does not benefit the tourist or the tourism vendor. It exploits the place without any regard to either maintaining the place or developing it more thoughtfully.

The Joida Model

Potential solutions to such challenges have been successfully and sensitively incorporated not too far away in the neighboring region of Joida. Both Dandeli and Joida are home to many native communities, some of them tribal, who have immense knowledge about the ecology of the place and have several unique skills in arts and crafts, which can be leveraged for the benefit of both locals and visitors. Even the cuisine that is consumed locally is unique, featuring an array of tubers, which have an annual festival. This cuisine ought to be to featured in restaurants menus and be celebrated accordingly.

Annual tuber exhibition in Joida by the tribal Kunabi people. © Amrut Joshi.

In all of this, I see hope in a cluster of homestays of the region, which are modeled on the public-private profit (PPP) sharing approach for the purpose of providing the best experience of a nature retreat and a cultural taste of regional specialties.

Even when river rafting was closed and the bigger hotels and resorts suffered losses from their adventure-tourism business model, some homestays of the region were not affected by this decision. Rafting was only an add-on to their tourism products. These homestays are run by members of the local community who offer rare view into their own cultural diversity. In the remote village of Gund, last in the region, Amara Homestays offers Yakshagana (a local theatre and dance form) workshop for its visitors and offers meals typical of the Havyaka people. These opportunities are cherished by the visitors. The owner claimed that his business is sustained by repeat visitors who look forward to this experience.

My Take

In hindsight, Dandeli-Joida offers the perfect canvas to showcase a panorama of evolving tourism trends in smaller cities in India and their impacts on multiple levels. In my experience of having travelled across different parts of India over the years and of viewing it through a cultural lens, it struck me that often the ideal tourism experience for an Indian tourist in India is hinged primarily on material comforts more than having an immersive cultural experience. The representation of local cultural identity in built and intangible forms is lacking too.

When our tourist infrastructure does not reflect this in design or application, the disconnect is but a natural consequence. The gap here is due not only to the tourist who chooses familiar material comfort as his priority, but also to the way these experiences are curated. The idea of ‘ecotourism’ has found traction only in recent years, and we are still grappling with what it means. Textbook definitions and generic principles of ecotourism seem not very relevant for the region, while failing to recognize that the local traditional systems offer perfect solutions to this dilemma. [Editor: See instead the “geotourism approach” put forth via National Geographic.]

The contrasting tourism models I witnessed in Dandeli offer many lessons for building a sustainable tourism model in these eco-sensitive habitats, while creating a unique experience for the visitor and safeguarding the natural landscape and culture for the future.

Sangway homestay nestled in the greenery. © Amrut Joshi

Once Overrun, Dubrovnik Plans for Sustainability

Dubrovnik, Croatia, a UNESCO World Heritage city, is known as the ‘Pearl of the Adriatic Sea’, its historic city center surrounded by original medieval stone walls – and until recently, thronged with cruise ship passengers. In 2017, that began to change. The following before-and-after story has been provided by the Mayor’s Office, City of Dubrovnik (with a closing note on the Covid hiatus).

View over the medieval historic core of Dubrovnik, ‘Pearl of the Adriatic’.

[All photos courtesy of the City of Dubrovnik]

‘Respect the City’ Program Includes Limits on Cruise-ship Crowds

Dubrovnik, a champion of Croatian tourism, is a city that is both a museum and a performance stage, a unique combination of history and modernity – a city with a capital C. Its rich cultural heritage, different architectural styles, various cultural events, film tourism (think Game of Thrones), Mediterranean flavors, and superior accommodations draw millions of tourists each year. The old city center, surrounded by original medieval walls, has been under UNESCO World Heritage inscription since 1979.

The coastal city is a popular stop-off for cruises. In 2013, for instance, there were more than one million cruise passengers in Dubrovnik, occasionally resulting in more than 10 thousand visitors in the historic core at one time.

Cruise ships pack the main Dubrovnik port in times before “Respect the City”.

By 2017 the city was facing negative publicity in global media due to overtourism and uncontrolled tourism development. The city was falling victim to its own success, and its citizens were becoming more openly critical. Amidst such chaos, many visitors could not fully experience the city’s history and culture. Eventually, UNESCO warned that the overwhelming number of tourists could result in its World Heritage listing being revoked and advised that no more than 8,000 tourists be in the historic core at any one time.

Signs of 21st-century mass tourism hang on a medieval street.

Shortly after being elected in June 2017, mayor Mato Franković introduced the multidisciplinary project “Respect the City” (RTC), aiming for more sustainable development of Dubrovnik. He began tackling the difficult challenge to reduce overcrowding through different measures for relieving traffic congestion and implementing smart city solutions. In particular, he reduced the number of souvenir stands by 80 percent and cut the number of restaurant tables and chairs by 30 percent. As a result, the City has lost some revenue, at least 5 million kuna a year (around €660,000 or US$786,000 ). To illustrate, the highest rent for a small stand at that time was more than 400,000 kunas annually, achieved at public tender.

‘Some of the measures we implemented are unpopular, but such moves are necessary if we want to reach the sustainable tourism we seek’, said Mayor Franković about financial losses. ‘Our task is to put the needs of citizens first. Everything we have done and will do in the future will greatly contribute to creating a unique destination experience and increase the quality of the overall service for all visitors’.

Various strategies have been implemented in cruise tourism. The City approached the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) and, in partnership with them, reorganized cruise schedules to stagger departure and arrival times. It is essential to emphasize that the cruise industry is an important segment of the economy in Dubrovnik. The city policy was that the number of people was never a problem; it was the flow. Better flow was achieved by organizing the ship-arrivals timetable more carefully, both daily and throughout the year. The maximum number of ships was set to two ships at once and the limit of visitors in the walled city coming from cruise ships at 4,000 – half the number suggested by UNESCO. Harmonization of arrival times has relieved pressure on the historic core in the summer seasons of 2018 and 2019 (pre-COVID years), compared to 2017 and earlier.

The 16th-century Pile Gate, main entrance to the old town, blocked by crowds in 2017 . . .

. . . and flowing freely in summer 2019.

CLIA´s repeated willingness to cooperate in order to resolve the existing problems in the spirit of partnership is precious to the City of Dubrovnik. As a part of that partnership and the “Respect the City” project, Dubrovnik in 2019 became one of the 30 world destinations for which the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) has done a Destination Assessment and Action Plan. Development of the Plan represents the City’s firm commitment and unshakeable determination in moving tourism towards a sustainable future.

The City achieved 70% of excellence in the GSTC report, attesting to its focus on a sustainable future for tourism and the city. GSTC recognized numerous examples of good practices in the process, mainly regarding public safety, urban cleanliness, and a high degree of heritage conservation. These included the reconstructed Lazareti site, special measures for heritage protection, local festivals, products, and entrepreneurs, as well as protection of biodiversity, and monitoring the Respect the City project itself.

Sustainable Tourism for a Sustainable Future
‘This report represents a new beginning of the story of a sustainable Dubrovnik and a sustainable way of managing tourism as our main industry,’ said Mayor Franković. ‘Working on assessment in 2019, GSTC consulted with 70 stakeholders from national and local government, the private sector, NGOs and universities, and residents. All stakeholder inputs are very valuable to us, because we want our city to be a great place for anyone – residents and guests alike’, he concluded.

Evening in Dubrovnik, after many cruise passengers have left.

The conservation of cultural heritage, the quality of citizens’ daily lives, and the provision of the best possible experience of Dubrovnik as a destination – all those are motives for this shift in destination management. Respect the City attracted the attention of international media and the global tourism sector. Dubrovnik is increasingly becoming perceived as a city that has started managing its tourism in a sustainable way. As key factors in years to come, the City of Dubrovnik is planning to take over cruise ship shuttle services and gradually eliminate traffic around the gateway area.

In COVID-19 times Croatia was recognized as a safe destination due to its good epidemiological situation in 2020, and safety continues to be the focus in 2021.

Just Out: the Autumn Destination Stewardship Report

Posted on October 8, 2020 by Jonathan Tourtellot

Welcome to the GSTC/DSC
e-quarterly
Destination Stewardship Report Autumn 2020
Summer 2020 – Inaugural Issue

How can destinations plan better for a post-Covid recovery? What have we learned about tourism during the ongoing crisis? The Autumn edition of the Destination Stewardship Report addresses both those questions with examples and practical guidance, providing links to these feature stories:

From sustainability leaders and destination mangers worldwide, a white paper laying out ten practical ways to plan a more lasting, regenerative, and community-compatible tourism recovery.
From Korea, the example of how a hard-working industrial city saved a natural bamboo habitat for migrating egrets, creating a new ecotourism attraction that revitalized the impoverished neighborhood next door.
From Serbia, its borders closed during the crisis, a look at what happens when a sudden influx of resort-pampered Serbs discover their own hinterland: lots of profits for rural residents – at a cost. [One anecdote reports a similar pattern in the US state of New Hampshire over the summer. —Ed.]
From Mallorca, Spain, plans that attempt to anticipate and prevent overtourism as travel restrictions loosen, with mixed opinions on the likelihood of success.
From the Columbia Gorge, USA, the fourth in our series of “Doing It Better” profiles about destinations working toward holistic management – in this case, a tourism alliance that unites the two states bordering the Columbia River.
From another thought leader, a better way to calculate return on investment as destinations emerge from the crisis, demonstrating that by using data science you can measure the hidden benefits of good stewardship. “Not everything that counts is counted,” goes the saying, but now it can be – affecting policy accordingly.
Plus, selected news stories and the latest on the Future of Tourism Coalition, which now has over 300 companies, agencies, and NGOs as signatories to its Guiding Principles.

Please read the latest Destination Stewardship Report here, comment, and propose your own contributions by contacting us.

This jointly sponsored e-quarterly is a collaboration between the Destination Stewardship Center and Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) – and in time, maybe others. Our goal is to provide information and insights useful to anyone whose work or interests involve destination stewardship. It’s an all-volunteer experiment, so its success will depend on your interest, feedback, and content contributions. Join us, and help each other. You can subscribe for free here.You can read the e-mail version here and the feature articles on our webpages. —Jonathan Tourtellot, Editor

For more information and participation please contact us.

About the Global Sustainable Tourism Council GSTC establishes and manages global sustainable standards, known as the GSTC Criteria. There are two sets: Destination Criteria for public policy-makers and destination managers, and Industry Criteria for hotels and tour operators. The GSTC Criteria form the foundation for accreditation of certification bodies that certify hotels/accommodations, tour operators, and destinations as having sustainable policies and practices in place. GSTC does not directly certify any products or services; but it accredits those that do. The GSTC is an independent and neutral USA-registered 501(c)3 non-profit organization that represents a diverse and global membership, including national and provincial governments, NGO’s, leading travel companies, hotels, tour operators, individuals and communities – all striving to achieve best practices in sustainable tourism. www.gstc.org
About the Destination Stewardship Center The DSC is a volunteer-driven nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting the world’s distinctive places by supporting wisely managed tourism and enlightened destination stewardship. We gather and provide information on how tourism can help and not harm the natural, cultural, and social quality of destinations around the world. We seek to build a global community and knowledge network for advancing this goal. Join us and learn more at www.destinationcenter.org.

Advice for a Basque Destination

Posted on May 9, 2019 by Jonathan Tourtellot

[Above: Gaztelugatxeko Doniene hermitage sits on an islet on Urdaibai’s Bay of Biscay coast. All photos courtesy Urdaibai Magazine.]

How should undiscovered coastal destinations handle tourism?

Earlier this year, Urdaibai Magazine, based in the Basque country of Spain, interviewed Destination Stewardship Center director Jonathan Tourtellot about how to build responsible tourism activity in this coastal region containing the Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve. With permission, we present an English-language version of that interview. The answers could apply to any seaside destination that is seeking a better approach to tourism. You can read the original, in either Basque or Spanish here.

Declared a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO in 1984, Urdaibai, northeast of Bilbao on the Bay of Biscay (Bizkaia in Basque) combines a maritime and rural environment with deep cultural traditions. The place is striving to be one where “humans and nature coexist in a framework of respect and sustainable development.” The interview follows.

Urdaibai Magazine: What are the global challenges facing tourism today ?

Jonathan Tourtellot: Overtourism, climate change, and a decision-making mindset that assesses tourism value only in terms of industry transactions—money—with little if any regard to the quality and character of the destinations on which tourism depends.

Urdaibai’s marshes and estuary form core of the Biosphere Reserve.

U.M.: What basic measures do you think should be taken by a small and still underdeveloped tourism territory, as is the case of Urdaibai’s Biosphere Reserve, to integrate tourism activity in a sustainable way?

J.T.: Measure tourism success in terms of value, not volume: Value in terms not only of revenue, but how well tourism benefits are shared by the community and how well they help preserve the natural and cultural heritage that visitors are coming to experience. Invite the kinds of tourism that bring other benefits to the community as well, from education and volunteer help to philanthropy and appropriate business development. Do not measure success just by number of tourist arrivals. That’s quantity, not quality.

U.M.: In order for the tourism to be an activity with a positive impact on the population and the territory, what kind of actions should we avoid when planning our tourism promotion and promotion strategy? What could we regret?

J.T.: Well, let’s look at what not to do! Avoid developing look-alike tourism resorts, hotels, and attractions that could be seen anywhere. Generic facilities are a good way to attract generic tourists—people who seek only better weather than they have back home and who will happily go elsewhere if another destination offers the same thing cheaper.

Everything developed for tourism should reflect distinctive aspects of Urdaibai, or Euskadi, or Spain (in descending order of importance). That mix of authenticity can provide tourists with a rich experience that cannot be duplicated elsewhere. What’s more, revenues from visitors who are sincerely interested in the Urdaibai area will benefit local people and encourage them to protect of the natural and cultural heritage upon which their income depends.

U.M.: You are the creator of a concept as attractive as “geotourism”: the geographical tourism, which could be interpreted today as a paradigm of sustainable tourism. How do you define geotourism? In this context, what should be the tourist’s attitude to make their impact positive and to help ensure that tourism does not become a global problem?

J.T.: The definition of geotourism as we put forth via the National Geographic Society is “Tourism that sustains or enhances the geographical character of a place—its environment, culture, geology, aesthetics, heritage, and the well-being of its residents.” Our research shows that people interested in those things—“geotravelers”—stay longer and spend more than the average tourist.

An aside: An alternate, much narrower definition of “geotourism” focusing explicitly on geology has gained traction in connection with the international geoparks movement. While clearly different, the two usages are compatible and complementary. In terms of tourism quality, each adds interest to the other, as set forth in the Arouca Declaration (downloadable in four languages) made in 2011 at the International Geotourism Congress in that Portuguese city.—J.T.

If you’re a traveler with a geotouristic attitude, you want your presence to help enhance a place rather than degrade it. The simplest way to do this is to support the businesses that support the quality of the place—businesses that not only practice basic sustainability but also showcase the nature and culture of the place. Spend your money there, not with an international franchise hotel or eatery just like the ones back home. Each Euro you spend is like a vote. Support variety, not sameness. You’ll have a richer trip and take home more memories.

Santimamiñe cave drawings in Kortezubi, Urdaibai date from more than 12,000 years ago.

And of course, you need to be a responsible visitor and encourage the same behavior in others: Recycle your trash if possible, respect local culture, and treat historic sites with care. And do put away that selfie stick. Sure, take a couple of shots of yourselves, but then turn the camera instead toward the place and what it has to offer. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? If you’re visiting just to prove you have been to one more destination, you’re no geotraveler, just a selfie narcissist taking up space and adding to the overtourism problem. Instead, learn everything you can and tell the people back home about it. Put those things on Instagram and Youtube, rather than your own face.

U.M.: Compatibility: Is tourism interested in the culture, historical heritage, the character of the territory, its natural environment, and the peculiarities of the societies it visits—is such tourism compatible with what is understood as “the tourism industry”?

J.T.: Yes and no. Yes, if “industry” is defined as any business that relies mainly on tourism, then it certainly is part of the industry.

This open-air Erregelak dance is one of numerous traditional Basque dances.

No, if it is mass tourism, high on volume and low on value per tourist footprint. What’s more, destinations catering to mass tourism tend to repel the tourists with the geotourism array of interests. Crammed beaches, amusement parks, and lots of T-shirt shops are not what they are looking for.

U.M.: As certifications for quality, process, origin, etc. gain importance in all areas of society, do you consider it necessary for destinations obtain tourism certifications of sustainability and commitment to the environment?

J.T.: Certifications or ratings (my preference) help, partly to differentiate yourselves from those destinations that care nothing about sustainability, partly to encourage any less-motivated stakeholders within your own destination, and partly to monitor your own progress.

U.M.: The National Geographic Society has been a pioneer and a world reference in the dissemination of natural wealth, culture, heritage and science and of the combination of these disciplines with travel and adventure, coming to create a style, a way of seeing the world. From your perspective as a representative for sustainable destinations, what do you think is the role of the specialized press in the development of respectful, integrated, and non-invasive tourism?

J.T.: Travel media have a variety of ways they can improve the conduct of tourism. It’s better to honestly inform than promote. If you do a good job as a travel journalist, the story you tell and show your public will do the promotion job for you. Increasingly, media need to encourage alternative destinations and sites—some media have already started doing this—to avoid overcrowding the famous places. Media need to encourage responsible travel and do the same with their advertisers. Even more than other specialties, travel media are notoriously close to their advertisers, a reality forced by the expensive economics of travel. Now, media may need to help educate their advertisers in how to promote destinations, tours, and accommodations more responsibly. Better to take focus off of generic resorts and golf courses and encourage advertisers instead to focus on the unique characteristics of the destination they are marketing.

Is This French Ecoresort a Game-Changer?

Posted on November 27, 2018 by David Randle

[Above: Accommodations at the Villages Nature ecoresort, a collaboration by Euro Disney and its French partner, Pierre et Vacances, owner of Center Parcs Europe.
Photos courtesy Villages Nature]

**France’s Villages Nature Blazes a New Trail for Sustainable Tourism**

Over the course of four visits to the new Villages Nature resort outside of Paris, I have become convinced that the world now has a new model for sustainable resorts and their neighboring communities. On each visit, I developed a deeper appreciation for the design, the sustainability features, and the inspirational model Villages Nature represents.

My first visit, May of 2017, was during construction. Frank Heatherton, the Master Planner for the resort, gave me a tour. He shared a design that I believe is a potential game changer for sustainable tourism as it provides a high quality resort and tourism experience while mitigating the issues defined by the science of the Nine Planetary Boundaries put forth by the Stockholm Resilience Center.

Villages Nature launched on October 10, 2017. During my second visit, at the inauguration, I had the opportunity to speak with Joe Rohde, the Walt Disney Imagineer who contributed to much of the design of Villages Nature.

Part of the 300-acre Villages Nature resort.

“What were the key goals of Villages Nature?” I asked.

“We were trying to create utopian idea,” he responded. “Often sustainable architecture is executed in designs that are so modern-spirited they do not necessarily connect with a broad popular audience. This is a danger, because sustainability will mean nothing unless it is adopted by that broad audience. Our goal was to romanticize sustainability, to make it aspirational, to make it approachable, to make it poetic.”

“Then what were the key design strategies used to accomplish this?”

“We settled on symbolic language that infuses the entire site,” he said. “One in which circles and fluid forms are used to represent nature, and angular orthogonal forms represent human enterprise. These two are woven through each other to create harmonic compositions. In addition we treated the entire site as a metaphor of a garden. Gardens require our stewardship and care. Imagining the world as a garden allows a picture of nature in which human agency is always present. So landscapes of the park are all various exclamations of the idea of gardens, from vast natural forms like an English estate, to formality inspired by French classicism, the narrative mystery of Chinese gardens, and so on.”

From these conversations, I learned that despite Villages Nature paying no specific attention to the science or framework of the Nine Planetary Boundaries, the resort was operating with real promise to significantly address all nine of them. Here a new model for sustainable tourism for the world has been born, using Bioregional’s One Planet Living framework along with the expertise of the Walt Disney Imagineers and other team members like Thierry Haua.

The resort includes five themed areas:

The Aqualagon—a 9000 square meter water park.
The Promenade—an array of restaurants featuring local and organic food and shops featuring nature discovery items along with items to improve health and well being.
The Forest Legends—a playground with games designed to help families reconnect to nature.
The Belle Vie Farm—literally a farm-to-table opportunity coupled with ways for people to learn about growing their own food and cooking it.
The Extraordinary Gardens—four gardens themed to Earth, Fire, Air, and Water that provide games to learn the One Planet Living process and a meditative garden walk to connect with nature.

Map of Villages Nature shows the five themed areas, housing, and the pool..

My third visit I learned that the resort received the World Hospitality Award for “Best Initiative in Sustainable Development and Social Responsibility.” I also invited Villages Nature to participate in a pilot program for the new Blue Community Certification that includes the GSTC criteria, the 12 blue community strategies to protect, enhance, and restore coastal habitat and marine environments, and the One Planet Living framework.

From Marie Balman, the director of corporate social responsibility, I learned about the company’s commitment to operating in ways that benefit guests, employees, and other stakeholders. To date the resort has:

40% of its supply chain from local businesses within 100 kilometers,
82% of its employees from the local area,
had visits by 300 students from local schools,
and created 600 jobs.

My fourth visit was for Villages Nature’s one-year anniversary conference, on Leadership and Governance for Sustainable Tourism, co-hosted by Blue Community. We were able to present the Blue Community Certification to the resort. The certification has four levels, and Villages Nature achieved the highest.

I further learned more of its sustainability features:

The 18-kilometer geothermal system that heats not only all of Villages Nature but also 30% of the two Euro Disney theme parks. The system reduces CO₂ by 9,000 tons a year.
A construction process that reused all excavated soil and diverted 98% of construction waste away from landfill.
A composting system that includes participation of waste separation in every cottage—zero waste to landfill.
A biodiversity plan that protects 72 species and brought back an additional 23.
The planting of 28,000 trees and 430,000 plants.
Water conservation efforts that keep the resort from ever tapping the aquifer.

In conclusion I offer you a few thoughts and impressions from my friends and colleagues who visited Villages Nature with me:

“Villages Nature lets you enter in the magical world of a sustainable park that is beautifully designed. It is a park planned to let you think and learn about sustainability while you have fun and experience it individually as well as with your friends and family. It is very inspiring, and leaves you something beautiful inside. The Extraordinary Gardens and the Aqualagon were my favorite worlds. The Belle Vie Farm, was where I had my favorite food experience: a unique breakfast sitting surrounded by tea pots.” —Silvia Barbone

“Villages Nature provides the perfect environment for family, friends, and guests to explore ways to ‘power-down’ in meaningful and fulfilling ways without compromising comfort or enjoyment.” —Rebecca Tobias

And from Joe Rohde:

“First of all, this is a place for a family to be together with each other, to experience the restorative calm of nature, and to have fun. After that, I hope people take time to imagine that this world they have experienced here could be built anywhere, in many climates, in many styles, and could become a model not for a utopian getaway, but for their own living communities.”

Villages Nature is nothing short of reinventing sustainable tourism.

We at Blue Community are now implementing projects in Florida where existing resorts are becoming more sustainable by integrating the Villages Nature model of the One Planet Living framework, the Blue Community strategies, and PM4SD (Project Management For Sustainable Development) skills.

Let us know if you want to bring this to your resort or community.

What To Do About Overcrowded Destinations

Posted on October 25, 2016 by Salli Felton

[Note: The following post is adapted from a presentation by Travel Foundation CEO Salli Felton at the Green Destinations Day conference in Ljubljana, Slovenia, 27 Sept.2016. Above: Tourists crowd Florence, Italy. Photo: Matt Haughey]

Tourism Leaders, We Have a Problem

Let’s take a tour to Venice. An amazing destination (below).

Venice’s Grand Canal. Photo: Ian Dolphin

Those of you who have been to Venice know that the reality is a little more like this:

Piazza San Marco, Venice. Photo: Gary Bembridge.

If have been watching the news, you will know that the people who live in Venice are saying they’ve had enough. We’re seeing headlines like these:

“Residents fear visitors are destroying their city”
“Mass tourism and soaring property prices have stifled life in the city”

I don’t want to criticise Venice. Instead I want to use it and a few other destinations to highlight the increasing, unchecked growth in tourism.

Barcelona tourism overkill. Photo: Evan Bench

The same problem exists in Barcelona – where this sort of messaging you see at right is appearing on the streets. Or more disturbingly, “Tourism is a bigger problem than poverty”.

For tourists, this doesn’t exactly feel like a warm welcome. Destination authorities are being forced to respond: “The Mayor ramps up efforts to introduce caps on visitors”. The trend continues in Berlin and many other cities that are on the global bucket list.

The problem isn’t just restricted to cities. We’re seeing it on islands like Majorca, and in beach holiday destinations like Thailand.

For decades, tourists have chosen Thailand for a holiday because they want to see and experience this:

Maya Bay, Phi Phi Islands, Thailand. Photo: Phalinn Ooi

But these days, similar to Venice, what they are actually getting is this:

Maya Bay, Phi Phi Islands, Thailand. Photo: Niruth Darid Bannob

So what’s the impact of all of these people?

Well, if you start with the tourists, they don’t seem to be that happy about it. They are being very vocal in telling their friends, family, and the wider TripAdvisor world that Maya Bay is “overcrowded and horrific”.

Ouch—not a way any destination wants to be described. Even more concerning, if you dig a little deeper, it quickly becomes apparent that the natural environment there is on the point of collapse. Nearly all the coral in the bay is dead or close to it. And like Barcelona, Thai officials are recognising the seriousness of these impacts. They are taking drastic action to stop the damage before it is too late. If in fact it’s not already.

Now all of these examples are from within the past 12 months. It’s pretty uncomfortable reading for anyone who loves to travel.

The Basic Mistake

However my objective is not to be all doom and gloom. I don’t for a minute believe that tourism is a lost cause or believe that all tourism has to result in the types of outcomes I’ve shown you here. I believe that tourism as an industry has one of the greatest potentials to be a catalyst for sustainable growth and economic development, bringing much needed income into local economies. I believe tourism provides a compelling argument for the conservation and preservation of natural and cultural resources. It provides the financial means to support this.

But if this is the case, why are we seeing these trends growing? How has tourism been allowed to go down this path in so many of these instances? To understand this we have to look at the root cause of the problem. You don’t need to be a genius to see that it’s all about putting quantity before quality.

When done badly, tourism focuses only on one simple measure: numbers of tourist arrivals. The assumption is that more people are better. More people mean more money, which in theory means more benefits for everyone. The theory doesn’t always translate into practice. It’s pretty clear that the people of Venice, Barcelona, or Thailand are not realising more benefits.

In the early stages of tourism development, visitor numbers can be a useful proxy indicator, as more visitors often translates into more benefits at this stage. But as destinations become more established, the relationship between volume and benefits weakens and so the measure of tourist arrivals becomes fundamentally flawed. More people might be bringing in more money, but where does it go? Does it stay in the country or does it leak out? And what are the environmental and social costs of more people? Does all this money they bring in cover these costs?

From these examples, more people don’t seem to be making tourists, residents, or destination authorities happier. They just seem to be creating major problems. If destinations are measuring only numbers of tourist arrivals, they can’t possibly have a clue:

Whether tourism is providing economic benefit to all members of a destination community;
Whether tourism is having a detrimental impact on the very resources that sustain both residents and tourists, or
Whether destination residents feel that their interactions with tourists are positive.

The number of tourist arrivals just tell us about quantity, not quality. So, in order to ensure that tourism fulfills its potential to encourage sustainable development, we need to understand what impact tourism is having on destinations. We need to find ways to measure this so that destinations can do a better job of managing tourism proactively.

There is a Solution

This will require global tourism frameworks to set new measures and targets to drive the way tourism is planned and managed for the future. The sorts of questions destinations need to be thinking about are:

• What types of tourism provide the greatest possible benefits at the least cost?
• What is the carrying capacity of the destination? How much is too much?
• What environmental and social costs will be encountered from tourism and how will mitigation be paid for?
• What limits need to be set to ensure destinations prosper from tourism whilst maintaining their long term sustainability?

All of these things will help destinations define what good growth looks like. If we can’t define it, how can we expect to achieve it? Understanding and measuring impacts is essential, but that’s not necessarily evident to the key stakeholders with the power to change existing practice. I’m talking about the government ministries who manage and regulate tourism and the private-sector travel companies who put together the packages that send tourists to the destinations. Aside from such destinations as Slovenia, Bhutan, and a handful of others, it appears that this message has not sunk in very widely.

So let’s think first about the private sector – the tour operators, hotel chains, ground handlers, and cruise companies. Are they measuring the impacts of their activities? Do they know if their businesses are having a positive or negative impact on the destinations they are selling? Maybe for a very small handful, yes—but across the board? No.

And what about the destination authorities, have they measured the impact tourism is having on the natural resources that sustain them? Or the impact tourism is having on the social fabric, such as quality employment, opportunities for small business growth, levels of crime, and the general well being of residents? Are they planning ahead and trying to attract the types of tourism that will provide the greatest positive impact? Again—a very small handful, yes, but generally, no. Why not? Because these things aren’t currently deemed to be the important measures of successful tourism.

This needs to change.

And changing it is. Over the past 10 years we’ve seen a variety of destination management frameworks being created to gather the sort of data that would be required to measure impacts. Among the numerous contributors to this effort are the Global Sustainable Tourism Council, Green Destinations, the European Tourism Indicator System, and the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), which has published Indicators of Sustainable Development for Tourism Destinations and launched a Network of Tourism Observatories with the aim to begin implementing these new policies and measurements.

So we are heading in the right direction. But it’s too slow, and there are two key issues that we still need to address.

Two Steps to Success

First, it’s clear that only a small number of converted champions are actually using these frameworks. They’re often ignored in destinations feeling the greatest negative impact from tourism or by the companies that help create these impacts. We need to work harder and faster at making these frameworks mainstream. To do this, we need to resist selling these frameworks primarily as a promotion or marketing tool. That is a fortunate by-product, not the reason to do it in the first place.

Instead we need to show companies and destinations that these frameworks add real value. The data and information they provide show where things are going wrong, how to fix things proactively, and where the greatest benefits can be gained. Simply put, measuring impact is good for the bottom line in the long term. Without it, we are just working in the dark. That is how impact assessment needs to be sold.

Second, the extra step to analyse this data needs emphasis. I’m not convinced these frameworks provide simple, clear, and practical ways for companies and destinations to analyse the data they collect. Destination authorities need to understand the material impacts of tourism. Yet, in my humble opinion, most of them don’t know how to do this. They’re still struggling to work out which indicator scheme to use! Whilst they might be collecting the data, they also need help using it to support strategic decision making.

So I put this challenge to you. The UN has declared 2017 the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development. We need to make the most of it and ensure it results in a positive step change. Let’s work together to build a new way to measure tourism success based on impact—and by doing so, unlock its potential to support happy, thriving destinations for generations to come.

Guyana’s Make or Break Moment for Tourism

Posted on April 13, 2016 by Devika McWalters

[Above: Impenetrable jungles line the Courantyne River between Guyana and Suriname. Photo: Devika McWalters]

As the daughter of Guyanese immigrants, I have experienced the conditions of the fledgling tourism industry in Guyana firsthand and know it leaves a lot to be desired. I have also witnessed its unique offerings for adventure travelers and can see it has great potential.

The sleepy village of Orealla in Guyana welcomes visitors and tourists. Photo: Devika McWalters.

A recent report by the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) echoes this view and also signifies an important “make or break” point for destination stewardship in this eco-rich country. The December 2015 report, “Tourism and Ecotourism Development in Guyana: Issues and Challenges and the Critical Path Forward”, provides a thoughtful and comprehensive overview of the current situation, potential for growth, and main obstacles facing this undiscovered ecotourism destination on the northern coast of South America.

Amerindian residents of Orealla rely on the river for their daily life.

Guyana’s indigenous communities rely on its clean rivers for survival. Tourism may create jobs but raises concerns about pollution and disruption of their daily lives. Photo: Devika McWalters.

Unfortunately, the danger of this well-meaning report is that it fails to provide a stewardship framework. There are many issues investors, policymakers, tourism companies, residents, and other stakeholders need to consider before acting on the report’s suggestions, one of which is improving the quality of lodging and transportation links.

Guyana’s ecolodges can be difficult to access , such as the Orealla Guest House, which takes several hours to reach by private boat. Photo: Devika McWalters.

My parents and I once visited the Orealla Guest House, located in a small village some 50 miles south of the Atlantic coast and accessible only by boat. Building highways to reach such eco-lodges and natural attractions seems like an obvious solution for improving accessibility, but ultimately, is doing so at the expense of clearing rain forests and destroying the fabric of this peaceful, pristine environment worth it? What will happen when the indigenous peoples – the current stewards of these lands – are forced to move when their rivers and streams are overfished or polluted by nearby hotels and lodges? How will the environment and wildlife be affected by noise and disruptions caused by new airports and runways? These issues are not raised, nor are other proactive measures or safeguards offered for stakeholders to consider while conceiving new tourism policies.

Amerindian residents of Orealla, Guyana are concerned about how tourism will affect their remote and peaceful village. Photo: Devika McWalters.

The report does, however, provide a sequential plan of five imperatives as a helpful starting point:

Gather and analyze data to inform policies.
Engage stakeholders in creating a master development plan based on social, economic, and financial analysis.
Create a logical and coherent legislative, regulatory, and policy framework.
Build core capacity for and assist as many stakeholders as possible, improve and classify lodging infrastructure, and upgrade and strengthen the entire tourist value chain, while maximizing scarce resources.
Continually work on improving price competitiveness and marketing its value propositions.

As the title of the report acknowledges, the path forward is “critical” for Guyana’s tourism. But it’s not just a matter of improving attractions, transportation, hotels, and restaurants. It’s which path and how Guyana chooses to get there that is critical. The next steps Guyana takes in building its tourism industry will ultimately determine its long-term sustainability and success as place where people will want to visit, live, and return to.

The future of Guyana's natural resources and cultural heritage are among the many things at stake as its tourism grows.

Guyana’s natural resources, cultural heritage, and future generations will all be affected as tourism grows. Photo: Devika McWalters.

A thoughtful, holistic tourism plan that protects its pristine rivers, indigenous cultures, vast rain forests, wildlife, and other assets would not only provide additional opportunities for economic growth, but would also preserve Guyana’s national treasures and tourism industry for generations to come. For Guyana become a permanently successful destination, practical solutions that also preserve the very assets that make it desirable must be encouraged and adopted.

Keeping a Destination Clean in Style

Posted on December 7, 2015 by Marco Sepulveda

[Above: Kaikoura, New Zealand. Photo: White Morph]

Dress Her in Corks and Carburetors

Months before Kaikoura’s annual fashion show, people start collecting the materials necessary for making the costumes: Trash.

Kaikoura, on the eastern seaboard of the South Island of New Zealand, prides itself on its EarthCheck accreditation, which requires the community to operate at the highest level of sustainability. One of the key targets they have set is to become a Zero Waste to Landfill Zone by 2015. To do so, they have implemented a policy to stop collecting nonrecyclable waste and instead, they offer a weekly recycling pick-up service for free. To encourage recycling they developed learning material and factsheets for businesses, families, and students at schools.

Photo: Andrew Spencer Photography

The Seaward Kaikoura Lions Club Recycled Trash Fashion Show is a key pillar of the strategy, providing a mechanism for community participation, building awareness, creating ownership and sharing knowledge. The show celebrates how local artists transform everything into garments, accessories, and gifts.

Innovative Waste, the Resource Recovery Company which collects and recycles the town’s waste products, has recently become the principal sponsor. The show has been a major project of the Seaward Lions since 2001 and has raised a considerable amount of money for various community undertakings while promoting the re-use and upcycling of many materials that, in other communities, would become part of the trash.

As the name of the show indicates, the costumes are all created from recycled materials, ranging from such things as plastic diaper bags, crisp packets, wine corks, old photographs, bras, car parts, seat belts and just about anything which would otherwise be thrown out in the trash!

Innovative Waste Kaikoura is a wonderful source of materials for the costumes, and one of the categories in the last show, called ‘Too Good to Waste’, required the complete costume to be created from its resources. Everything from shower curtains to crushed glass was utilized to make the costumes, which ranged from ‘The Last Samurai’ to ‘Lady Gar-bage’.

After the show, many of the costumes are displayed by various businesses in town, or by the organisations such as YHA (sponsor of one of the categories), or the local museum, so that tourists and locals can see them and be suitably impressed by the imagination and talent of their designers and creators. When the new museum is opened, it is hoped it will have a dedicated Trash to Fashion display. After that, most of the costumes will go back to the Resource Recovery Centre where they will be recycled.

Photo: Andrew Spencer Photography

As you can see from the above, the Trash Fashion show sits very well in the philosophy of EarthCheck. Most of the resources are locally sourced, are used in an innovative fashion and recycled at the end of the process.

For further information about Kaikoura click here.
For further information about ‘Trash to Fashion’ show click here.
For further information about EarthCheck click here.

A First: 440 Destinations Rated by Nat Geo Experts Compiled in One Place

Posted on March 19, 2015 by Jonathan Tourtellot

[Above: Portion of the 2006 Traveler cover featuring the stewardship survey of 94 World Heritage destinations. Courtesy, National Geographic Traveler.]

—

Landmark Research There has been nothing like them, before or since. For seven years, from 2004 to 2010, I was privileged to oversee National Geographic’s Destination Scorecard surveys of experts’ opinions on stewardship for hundreds of places around the world. We published the numerical scores annually as a cover story in National Geographic Traveler.

Now, for the first time, we at the have compiled in our Destination Watch section a master list of most of the destinations surveyed by Nat Geo since 2006. For ease of understanding, we’ve translated the numerical scores into letter grades for 440 places, listed on these five pages:

Those links show destinations by grade. Download this pdf to see all 440 destinations and grades listed by country.

The surveys polled a panel of hundreds of experts on destinations that they knew well. For each place, we asked these panelists to consider six stewardship criteria: environment, built heritage, social/cultural impacts, aesthetics, tourism management, and overall trend. After exchanging comments anonymously, they then rated each destination on a scale from 0 to 10. We calculated the averages and published the results.

You can read more About the Surveys and their methodology. Basically, it was a “wisdom of crowds” approach—in this case, a very knowledgeable crowd. It proved remarkably consistent. In our first survey, conducted in 2003-4 with fewer than 200 panelists, the Norwegian Fjords won the top place, and the Costa del Sol came in with the lowest score. After a five-year interval, we surveyed many of the same destinations again, this time with a very different panel of over 400 experts. Those 2009 results? Norwegian fjords best, Costa del Sol worst.

Please Join In

Some of these grades need updating, and we will be soliciting your opinions on whether they should go up, down, or stay the same.

As administrator of the surveys, I did not rate any destinations myself. In some cases I thought the consensus was way off, but more often than not it would turn out that the experts knew some things that I didn’t. In few cases, I still disagree! More important, new developments in some places suggest a new grade. I’ll be offering a few comments in those cases at the bottom of each list. You can, too.

We plan to start featuring individual destinations from month to month and asking your opinions about them. If there’s a particular destination whose condition interests or concerns you, please contact us.

Destination Stewardship Center

Extending the work of the National Geographic Center for Sustainable Destinations.

Tag Archives: sustainable development