Guide to Sustainable Tourism
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Part 1: Introduction Part 2: Designing Your Sustainability Policy Part 3: Measuring and Managing Your Impacts Part 4: Glossary and Definitions Acknowledgements
The information contained in this guide is intended to address the unique needs of the travel and tourism industry. By providing useful tips on how to measure and manage your business' impacts, it will assist you in implementing sustainable business practices and management systems, while walking you through the STEP certification process.
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Preliminary Considerations Sustainable tourism development embraces the triple bottom line of environmental protection, social responsibility, and economic health. It is, therefore, essential to address your business' environmental, socio-cultural and economic impacts as part of your holistic approach to sustainable tourism.
When thinking about what kinds of impacts relate to your specific business activities, consider the following:
Leakage is another economic impact to be concerned about. It is an entirely negative impact. When a tourism business buys supplies or services from outside the region, the money spent is providing no indirect impact to the region, and thus that money is leaking out of the local economy. To be economically sustainable, a tourism business must minimize their leakage as much as possible.
Guide OverviewThe information provided in this document covers three aspects of sustainability. Part Two focuses on how to design a sustainability policy. Part Three, the bulk of the guide, will show you how to measure and manage 11 categories of impacts. Part Four includes a glossary and definition of terms.
If you keep a broad perspective on tackling each of these categories and if you stay focused on high priority areas and improving your organization's positive impacts, you'll quickly discover that sustainability equates to profitability.
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