The iconic Yellow Mountains of Huangshan, China boast the only Global Destination Stewardship Award in the country and an UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site. Huangshan Scenic Area, China (HSAC) are longtime members of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council and past participants of the GSTC Early Adopters Program. Given these accomplishments, HSAC will be hosting the [...]
April 14, 2015 – The Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) is pleased to announce that the GREAT Green Deal Sustainable Certification Program has achieved ‘GSTC Recognized’ status. The awarded status affirms GREAT Green Deal’s commitment to promote sustainable tourism products and services The GREAT Green Deal Sustainable Certification Program (GGD) represents a way of doing [...]
April 8, 2015- The Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) is pleased to announce the recent launch of the GSTC Destinations Program. For all destinations, even those with no previous experience with sustainability, the GSTC Destinations Program offers valuable engagement with a GSTC destination expert providing custom guidance on the world’s leading destination sustainability standard: the [...]
Sustainable tourism certification programs have increasingly become an important strategy for encouraging the sustainable production of travel & tourism goods and services. However, the overwhelming number of existing sustainable tourism certification programs create both market and consumer confusion regarding what is to be expected from a sustainable tourism product or experience. Since 2008, the Global [...]
Based in Quito, Ecuador, CarpeDM Adventures is an adventure company committed to meeting the needs of the community, clients and business partners through innovative programs that enhance the delivery of quality adventure travel. Building the social consciousness of the world one tour at a time, CarpeDM adapted the “DM” in CarpeDM to represent “Doing More”. Since inception, CarpeDM always [...]
March 17, 2015 – The Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) is pleased to announce that EarthCheck has achieved ‘GSTC Recognized’ status for their Destination Certification. The awarded status affirms EarthCheck’s commitment to promote sustainable tourism products and services worldwide. EarthCheck is an international environmental management and professional services group, which was established in 1987. EarthCheck [...]
The Global Sustainable Tourism Council welcomes the news that longtime member and GSTC-Recognized standard EarthCheck has renewed its partnership with InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), GSTC’s newest sponsor. This collaboration will support IHG hotels in furthering their sustainability pathway by working towards sustainable tourism certification through EarthCheck’s GSTC-Recognized standards program. Last year IHG announced that its [...]
Randy Durband spoke at this event discussing how certification can assist in solving problems like rural poverty and climate change. Standards and certification are making strides to drive better production practices around the world and raise the sustainability bar in many sectors, but the earth’s systems remain in crisis, with [...]
The second edition of this congress addressed both energy and tourism together. This congress focused on sustainable tourism including issues such as governmental policies regarding energy efficiency, reducing emissions, and environmental impacts. Luigi Cabrini, chair of the GSTC participated in this event. […]
February 25, 2015 – The Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) is pleased to announce that GreenEarth.travel and VisionCSR's Green Growth 2050 sustainable tourism standard has achieved 'GSTC Recognized' status. Green Growth 2050 Standard has been developed to meet the needs of tourism and travel businesses seeking today's solutions to the issues driving social, cultural [...]
The Sustainable Tourism Certification Alliance Africa, formerly known as the Sustainable Tourism Network Southern Africa (STNSA), is an alliance of sustainable tourism certification stakeholders in Africa, with an initial focus on countries in southern and East Africa. The Alliance aims to enable an integrated approach to sustainable tourism certification throughout the continent. For more information please [...]
Paul Snyder, IHG Vice President of Corporate Responsibility and GSTC Board Member An interview with IHG's Paul Snyder about the successful Green Engage program. InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) is the newest sponsor of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC), and one of the leading hotel companies, with 4,700 hotels around the world. [...]
The GSTC’s Chair of the Board, Luigi Cabrini, is featured in the February edition of the Travel & Tour World online magazine. The Travel & Tour World magazine is a B2B travel magazine with online global readership of over 2 million. The article entitled “GSTC Making Advances in Tourism Sustainability” focuses on the history, [...]
February 9, 2015- The Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) is pleased to be hosting the 2015 Latin America Regional Meeting, taking place at the Palacio de Cristal in Quito, Ecuador on April 26, 2015. The GSTC Latin America Regional Meeting will give travel and tourism professionals a foundational list of tools, contacts, and references to [...]
The Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) and several members recently participated in FITUR, the International Tourism Trade Fair, held January 28 to February 1, 2015 in Spain. During this event, GSTC Chair Luigi Cabrini and board member Jane Ashton (TUI Travel), participated at the meeting of the Advisory Group for the United Nations recently launched [...]
There is a heightened awareness of the growing global issue that food waste represents in a context of booming populations, shrinking arable land, freshwater scarcity and climate change. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), roughly 33% of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year, approximately 1.3 billion tons, [...]
The Destination Sustainability Comprehensive is an opportunity for destination managers to learn their current status according to the leading international standard, the Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria for Destinations. The GSTC Sustainability Comprehensive involves up to 10 days in the destination, including site visits, detailed analysis of the destination's documented policies, and intensive liaison with destination [...]
The GSTC Criteria serve as basic guidelines for businesses, organizations and destinations that wish to address sustainability issues in the travel and tourism industry. It is composed of a set of standards and provides assurance that the main principles of responsible tourism are being covered. In reality, the GSTC criteria represents a commitment to the [...]
January 20, 2015 – The Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) is pleased to announce that the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism’s Green Star Hotel program has achieved ‘GSTC Recognized’ status. The awarded status affirms Green Star Hotel’s commitment to promote sustainable tourism products and services. Green Star Hotel is a national [...]
"The diverse players of the travel and tourism industry have shown very mixed efforts in trying to “do the right things” for the environment and people, and have had very mixed results. That’s why effective use of universal standards for sustainability is essential. Some of the most prominent guidelines are for global hotel operations, [...]
