Sustainable Tourism: The Tour Operators' Contribution

areas where companies can integrate sustainability
practices are:
• Internal management, by taking into account
sustainability principles in the management of
human resources, office supplies and production
of printed materials;
• Product development and management, by
planning tours and selecting holiday package
components that minimise environmental,
economic and social impacts;
• Contracting with suppliers, by integrating sustainability
principles into the selection criteria and
service agreements of suppliers;
• Customer relations, by guaranteeing privacy,
health and safety standards, and providing
customers with information on responsible
behaviour and sustainability issues at their
destinations; and
• Relations with destinations, by supporting
destination stakeholders’ efforts to address
sustainability issues and financially contributing to
conservation and development projects.
Responses by individual tour operators in each of
these areas vary considerably, influenced by their
size, type of holiday packages offered (and hence
type of customers) and destinations served. For any
company, though, to ensure that activities targeted
toward sustainability are comprehensive, credible and
lead to long-term positive changes, it is important to
integrate sustainability principles into corporate policy
and management systems, and to monitor and report
on performance. And, while each company has a
responsibility to individually address the challenges
of sustainability, sectoral approaches and tools can
effectively complement individual companies’ efforts
and create synergies throughout the industry.
This document offers a survey of different
programmes, policies and actions that tour operators
are implementing around the world to promote
the goals of sustainable tourism and protect the
environmental and cultural resources upon which
their business depends. Many of these examples
are works in progress and are continuously being
revised by the tour operators. Furthermore, none of
the actions presented here represents the one and
only solution to preventing and mitigating impacts
from tour operators’ activities, as effective response
requires addressing all areas of responsibility and
identified impacts. However, they do provide an
opportunity to understand the range of different
options that tour operators can choose from.
The case studies in this document are organised in
six sections:
• Integrating Sustainability into Business,
• Supply Chain Management,
• Internal Management,
• Product Management and Development,
• Customer Relations, and
• Co-operation with Destinations.
For each case study, we offer a brief description of
the good practice, a history of its development and
implementation, and a description of the benefits of
such practices, both for the tour operators and for
other stakeholders in the tourism industry, including
communities, customers, destinations, staff and
suppliers.
Sustainable Tourism: The Tour Operators’ Contribution