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:

	Environmental Impacts: Biodiversity, global warming and climate change, as well as water quality and scarcity are all problems that have a worldwide scope. This category relates to operational impacts on land, air, water, and other organisms. Recycling waste, controlling water usage, minimizing greenhouse gas emissions, and protecting natural ecosystems are all measures that play a role in environmental impact management.
	Socio-cultural Impacts: Socio-cultural impacts are those that affect local communities' social structures and cultural integrity. One of the benefits of responsible tourism is the promotion of tolerance and acceptance of different cultures through education and direct experience. This can support a diverse "global community" and not a world of monoculture. As a travel provider, it is important to help local and indigenous people maintain their cultural integrity in the face of vast economic promises. In the long run, this benefits both business and the community. Maintaining the cultural integrity of local community also helps minimize resentment from people who are negatively affected by tourism. This resentment can be directed at your clients, thus earning the destination a bad reputation, and threatening the chances of further economic development for the region, as well as negatively affecting your company’s business.
	Economic Impacts: The economic impacts of tourism are usually broken up into three categories: direct, indirect, and induced economic impacts. Direct impacts include monetary transactions from operations during tourist visitation. This involves impacts on tourism businesses themselves. For example, if more tourists overnight in hotels, then the hotels where they stay will receive a direct monetary benefit. This category also includes any amount paid out including wages, taxes, supplies and services. Indirect impacts are changes in sales, income, or employment within the region of industries that supply products and services to the tourism industry. For example, increased sales in linen supply firms resulting from more hotel sales are an indirect impact of visitor spending. Induced impacts are changes in economic activity resulting from household spending of income earned directly or indirectly from the tourism industry. For example, hotel and linen supply employees spend their income in the local region for housing, food, transportation, and household products and needs. The sales, income, and jobs that result from household spending of increased wage or salary are included in this category. 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 Overview
The 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.