Green, Sustainable, Responsible – but how to prove it?
01. Oct, 2008
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Cape Town – Claiming your business is environmentally, socially or economically sustainable is great for attracting customers – but only if you can prove it. Savvy travellers are starting to sniff out and punish the pretenders, and reward the real makoya.
Last week I highlighted the confusion of terminology and of the industry about being ‘green’, ‘sustainable’ or ‘responsible’. But for those who have their mind wrapped around these concepts, what are travel and tourism businesses doing to prove they’re deserving of the claim?
A number of organisations have membership criteria that require adherence to minimum standards or a code of good practice regarding the environment and fair business policies. These are relatively weak standards, but they’re better than none, and they do give the traveller some recourse so they are usually taken seriously by the travel trade.
These include the RT Star Ratings from the Association of Independent Tour Operators (AITO), which is for UK-based tour operators. There is also GreenStaySA, a new free South African self-rating system for accommodation providers that will help to reduce the environmental impact of tourism before, during and beyond the much anticipated Soccer World Cup in 2010.
Sadly there are only a couple of meaningful accreditation schemes for travel and tourism out there.
Foremost among them is Fair Trade in Tourism, which is an independent NGO that assesses according to socio-economic and environmental criteria. It is one of the few that tackles the social and economic dimensions in a rigorous way. They do real hands-on, on-site assessments. It’s a tough standard to meet and to maintain, and right now is the premier standard for truly responsible tourism products.
There is also the Heritage Environmental Rating Programme managed by a private sector company. They call it an “eco-labelling option” that is aligned with a number of leading international standards to help with compatibility on environmental issues. It’s a good standard, but will be challenged to hold up under a for-profit, privately held model.
For designated “green buildings”, there is the Green Building Council of SA, which provides a Green Star rating. Note that this applies to the building itself and not to any business practices.
This doesn’t leave much else for the savvy business looking to leverage their investment, save for winning awards (like the Imvelo Awards run by FEDHASA, or the big international ones like WTM’s Responsible Tourism Awards or the WTTC’s Tourism for Tomorrow award), or being vetted for inclusion on one of the commercial portals that promises to meet its own sustainability product selection criteria (like www.responsibletravel.com).
There’s some activity underway that should help, though, and the next couple of years look to be good ones for sustainability in South Africa’s tourism industry.
In particular, Green Stay SA is a project driven by the public sector sector for assessing and rating accommodation providers (with a ‘4-leaf’ system), but DEAT have decided that they want a national standard, and we’re told that something should be forthcoming late next year. Hopefully this will put some carrots and sticks in place to accelerate adherence to the National Responsible Tourism Guidelines and rationalise it with the Tourism BBBEE Scorecard.
It’s worth noting that some tourism membership associations, such as Cape Town Tourism (backed by good work from the City of Cape Town), do have bits and pieces of sustainability criteria in their membership requirements too. Although this doesn’t warrant a special status for members per se, it does go a long way toward lifting the level of the destination as a whole.
[Next week: resources for helping tourism and travel companies become green, sustainable and responsible]
About Blogger
KURT ACKERMANN writes, researches and consults on strategy, business models and brands for organisations adapting to globalisation and technological change. He is the proprietor of the Afrikatourism blog for responsible travel at afrikatourism.blogspot.com.
My name is Muzi Mohale a full-time travel blogger, your host at Travelwires.com responsible for all editorial on this blog. I blog about the travel and tourism industry in Africa. Apart from blogging about tourism, I also run 
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