Why sticking with the winners is great for sustainable tourism sales

Just like great wine great tourism benefits from accolades

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WTTC has come out with their call for entries for next years Tourism for Tomorrow Awards while showcasing this year’s winners again and again.

GTBS is quickening up their certification to provide a massive list of certified and audited green establishments and operations.

Scottish tourism sustainable Thistle awards have issued their lists of entrants and their shortlist of potential winners.

Wild Asia has just had their awards. Global Eco will shortly be showcasing theirs.
Why the big deal?

The old tourism formula is simple. Basically everybody sells the same stuff. It may look a bit different, but in its heart it’s the same.

For holiday travel you get the same 3 or 4 star accommodation in a nice warm place, usually with a beach. In the Far East, the Caribbean, in Europe or in Africa resorts all look much the same, feel the same, smell the same. OK the food and the architecture is a bit different, but if your clients were looking for different cuisines they could stay at home.

The major differentials are: How far? (ie how long does it take to get there?)How hot? (Can clients be guaranteed a suntan/scant clothes/meals outside/warm nights/warm sea?) How different? (this means how different does it LOOK in the promo material and the holiday snaps – not in actuality. How cheap? Naturally this is the killer issue.

And you’ve been in the travel and tourism industry for long enough you’ve seen the destinations come stay awhile and then begin to fall apart from Lido di Jesolo through the Costa Brava, the Gambia, Dominican Republic, Turkey, Goa, Phuket,. All packaged tourism, all factory processed.

The fact is that factories are profitable until they become unprofitable then you close them down and build a new and more profitable one somewhere else.

Somewhere different, exotic NEW.

But sustainable tourism is different, so they say. It’s truly ‘authentic’ a ‘real’ experience, as it were. So each offer is really truly different – so different that it takes some time to explain.

Quality sustainable tourism offers are rather like good wine to be savoured, understood and copied. They are not just beds and beaches and meals – they are sustainable beds and beaches and meals with histories, effects social and cultural and environmental and economic dimensions.

It may be complicated – but goodness, does it add value – even more so when its got an accolade. You could call sustainable tourism awards the Appellation Controlees of tourism – and you know just how much that’s worth!

Valere Tjolle

Get free sustainable tourism reports from Vision on Sustainable Tourism HERE

Valere Tjolle is editor of the Sustainable Tourism Report Suitewww.travelmole.com/stories/1143624.php