Services

Sustainability advisory and assessment

Fair Travel applies the criteria and methodology developed by the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC), a UN initiated organization. Applying these global criteria and framework, destinations and individual businesses can be analyzed and evaluated on their current sustainability performance and advised on how to improve with cutomized recommendations. The evaluation can be used for implementation of a sustainability management system or potentially move on towards sustainability standards and certifications.

Areas included in analysis of Destinations

Sustainable management:
Organization, stakeholder engagement, coordination with public sector and social society, marketing, risk and crisis management, accessibility, visitor management, seasonal variations, climate adaptations, security, land use etc.
Socio-economic sustainability:
Local economic benefits, economic statistics, local engagement, employment policies, social responsibility, safety and health, investment in small and medium-sized enterprises,
Nature and cultural sustainability:
Conservation and use of natural and cultural heritage, control of tourists and codes of conduct, intellectual property rights etc.
Environmental sustainability:
Climate and environmental plans, biodiversity management.

Scope of the service provided:

to define the sustainability aim together with the client
to collect data and information, in the geographically defined area, regards to landowners, businesses, local community, stakeholders, nature, culture and the roles of the authorities
to collect inventory of the destination and its sights, including visiting key places to better understand it and its challenges
to analyze collected data and information and propose a master plan to the client
- the plan takes into consideration the client’s prerequisites to successfully achieve the sustainability aims, their strengths and challenges and proposed actions
- the plan presents proposed prioritizes for the client on how to achieve the sustainability ambitions.

Destination Assessment

The Global Sustainable Tourism Council has developed a destination assessment methodology, GSTC Destination Program, which was designed to introduce the destination management team to the core elements required to develop sustainable policies and practices by applying the GSTC Destination Criteria to the specific destination.

The method has been applied by Fair Travel and is a service offered to destinations. This assessment process allows for a destination to better understand the destination’s sustainability status against the GSTC Criteria, and to identify areas for improvement which helps your destination to understand how to systematically apply the GSTC Criteria to improve your destination's sustainability efforts.

Detailed information about the assessment.