GSTC Market Access Program
GSTC promotes market access for certified sustainable businesses to travelers and travel providers of hotels/accommodations, with a strong preference for those businesses certified by GSTC-Accredited Certification Bodies (accredited certifications). Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) are responding to market demand for sustainable product, external ESG reporting requirements, and to their internal CSR and sustainability goals, by seeking methods to provide easy and clear access to sustainable products and services to the marketplace of travelers. OTAs wish to highlight with a mark and provide their users a filter to identify “sustainable” hotels based on a reliable source of information.
Travellers increasingly seek eco-friendly and socially responsible options, and incorporating accommodations with accredited certification into the OTA’s platform can present to customers with a trusted selection of sustainable choices, responding to the growing market demand for sustainable products.
Through the Market Access Program, our OTA Partners get regular updates on the certified and verified accommodations as we collect this information from Certification Bodies and Recognized Standard Owners (RSO) on a regular basis. Businesses certified by a GSTC-Accredited Certification Body, meeting all the GSTC Criteria (or a GSTC-Recognized Standard), have the highest level of assurance and credibility available. With an accredited certification, customers and buyers are assured that the business was certified in a credibly verified procedure in a transparent, impartial, and competent manner.
Eligibility to Participate in the Market Access Program (MAP)
The GSTC Market Access Program (MAP) currently has two levels of filtering eligibility:
Main Filter: Accredited Certification
Hotels/accommodations certified by a GSTC-Accredited Certification Body (having “accredited certification”) are and remain eligible for inclusion in the program.
In the same manner that hotels seek 3rd-party certification in order to verify their claims with external, independent, neutral, and competent auditing/certification programs, the Certification Bodies that provide those services can and should seek 3rd-party accreditation to validate and certify their claims. Accreditation involves intensive and open scrutiny of the processes of certification in order to determine that those processes and decisions comply with international norms for quality and impartiality. This is the highest level of credible external auditing; the accreditation of certification. In some other sectors, accreditation is a recruitment by national governments and standards bureaus.
Second Filter: conditional verification to certain standards
GSTC currently supports an additional second lower level filter, making eligible those hotels/accommodations verified by Standard Owners that use a GSTC-Recognized Standard (i.e., a standard that formally includes within it the GSTC Criteria). The inclusion of the second filter is a temporary measure to boost and establish the Market Access Program while recognizing the sustainability efforts of the accommodations that have been verified by Recognized Standard Owners.
Only Recognized Standards that are used for certification and meet the needed requirements are included in the list of sustainable accommodations (such as stating that an 3rd-party on-site audit is mandatory). Not all Standards that have obtained GSTC-Recognition are part of the Market Access Program.
To maintain the GSTC-Recognized status of the standards, owners of existing Recognized Standards used for “certification” need to formally open an application to pursue accreditation or enter into the arrangement with GSTC whereby they act as a “Certification Scheme” by December 31, 2024. Failing to do so will result in the Recognition status being terminated (for more details).
GSTC guides participating OTAs and distributors use filter #1 indefinitely, and launch their program to include filter #2 with a phase-out plan that states estimated or fixed dates of removal of filter #2. For example, in 2024 an OTA might announce that filter #2 terminates on December 31, 2024.