Top 100 Sustainable Destination Awards plus major new sustainable tourism agreement next week at ITB

Fiskars – Iron town to sustainable destination

Once again, ITB Berlin is hosting the world’s leading award series for destination sustainability efforts. This event is dedicated to recognise innovation and good practices in tourism management by islands, towns, regions and whole countries.

The event will be held on 4 March 2020 | 16:00-17:30 Messe Berlin – ITB Awards Hall, Palais am Funkturm

A Jury representing 12 international organizations will unveil the winners in the following award categories: Nature; Communities & Culture; Best of Africa; Best of the Americas; Best of Asia-Pacific and Best of Europe.

The flagship award is the ITB Earth Award, recognizing global leadership in combating climate change and environmental degradation.

50 Sustainable Destination good practice stories have been nominated by Top 100 destinations, available on www.sustainabletop100.org. Top 100 selection is an eligibility requirement  for destinations to submit a Sustainable Destination Awards nomination.  From the nominations, the international jury selected winners and finalists in 7 categories based on completeness, innovative character, effectiveness, transferability and the destination’s general sustainability assessment level (e.g. certified).

Just a few of the good practice success stories:

Galapagos: A vision for REAL SUSTAINABLE TOURISM

Fiskars Village: An Iron producing village to a great resort

Gozo: Managing seasonality for benefits

Kahuzi Biega – Congo: Gorillas in the Congo

Tmatboey Cambodia:  Conservation and community

Ljubljana food: Sustainable FOOD!

ECOTRANS and high-level representatives from UN-CBD, UNESCO, GSTC, WWF, SUNx will also present the case for urgency in boosting sustainable tourism as driver for advancing the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

They will announce their collaboration under the "Travel Green Planet 2030" initiative to mainstream credibly certified tourism in all destinations with protected areas and cultural heritage sites, using the shared Green Travel Maps on the Tourism2030 platform for knowledge networking and annual reporting.

Green Destinations, bookdifferent.com and FairVoyage.com will announce their cooperation to highlight certified travel offer to consumers; and the Good Travel Guide will be presented as tool for Top100 destinations to showcase and book sustainable travel options.

The 2020 Top 100 call (in order to pre-qualify for 2021 Sustainable Destination Awards at ITB) is open until May 1st, 2020, and the selection will be announced during Global Green Destinations Days (6-8 October) in Bodrum, Turkey.

The event is organized and sponsored by ITB Berlin, Green Destinations, the Sustainable Top 100 Partnership, TravelMole, Travelife for Tour Operators and ECOTRANS. Further info: HERE

 See the 2019 Sustainable Destinations here:

Valere Tjolle

Valere has just published an irreverent history of the travel industry from 1960 until today – You Lucky People is available as a paperback for £7.99 or an ebook £2.99 at Amazon HERE