Tour~Link Towards a sustainable tourism supply chain Sustainable tourist accommodation management The roles and responsibilities of tourism sectors in sustainable development Menno Houtstra – ECEAT BEST-EN THINK TANK 2006 Girona, 14 June 2006

Towards a sustainable tourism supply chain The TOUR-LINK project as research framework The project TOUR-LINK is a European sector wide co-operation between tour operator associations and tourism certification schemes to foster a sustainable tourism supply chain (EU LIFE, ) Majority of touroperators in UK and NL want to favour suppliers with demonstrated commitment to sustainable development. Touroperators as well as suppliers demand for guidance and unified approach (one checklist) Tour~Link

Towards a sustainable tourism supply chain A new basis for sustainability assessment The LCA method is applied in tourism mostly for expressing environmental impact: the impact on the environment should return to zero, and the indicators that are most far away get the highest priority. It became a dominant concept in tourism after introduction by many national tourism ecolabels and the European Eco- Flower for tourism. ECEAT wants to offer such unified approach that can accurately demonstrate sustainability commitment Until now, the only concept that gives a theoretical basis to such approach is the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) Tour~Link

Towards a sustainable tourism supply chain A new basis for sustainability assessment But the LCA method itself can not answer what is the desired situation of sustainability issues such as biodiversity, equal rights, employment, etc. contrary to what seems to be the case with environmental impact. The LCA method also can not in itself answer who is responsible for what. For example what part of the mobility, needed for a holiday, is part of the suppliers’ responsibility and what of the tourist?? Tour~Link

Towards a sustainable tourism supply chain A new basis for sustainability assessment LCA dominance poses tourism ecolabels now for the question how to widen up to sustainable development, as many of them wish to do so. Because LCA method are used by scientists, there is no inherent tendency to integrate new societal tendencies that are still marginal but promising, for example: “recyclability” of the construction and support of organic agriculture LCA dominance also facilitate the conservative sectors (e.g. HOTREC) not to take any action, because, as we will see later, exactly the criteria that are favoured by LCA can be easily refuted.

Tour~Link Towards a sustainable tourism supply chain A new basis for sustainability assessment ECEAT therefor developed a new method that (1) is based on sustainability principles, (2) include all stakeholders to identify the responsibilities and criteria and is (3) multi-sectoral, in order to identify the responsibility of the tourism sector versus other sectors e.g. the “household sector” (consumers). (1) Sustainable tourism should significantly contribute to the sustainable development of the destination, in which the critical elements of this definition being “significant” and “destination” will be further defined by the stakeholders.

Tour~Link Towards a sustainable tourism supply chain The ECEAT model (2) The stakeholder groups involved are: (1) the environmental and development organisations that are engaged in the sustainable development of the “destination”, (2) scientists that supply the discussions with criteria and indicators that have earlier been adopted in other destinations and reflect on the coherency of the arguments, (3) the product suppliers of the “destination” and (4) the tourists making use of the products.

Tour~Link Towards a sustainable tourism supply chain The ECEAT model (3) The argument to work sector based is the relatively strong competition between the SME’s. Only if a specific sector agrees as a whole (as in the TOUR-LINK project) to sustainability principles, the individual companies are ready to take more risk for investments in sustainable development that will possibly raise their cost price (as it will raise the price of all competitors).

Tour~Link Towards a sustainable tourism supply chain ECEAT has worked on this basis the last 10 years and implemented and advised on quality systems in: The ECEAT model 9 European countries for a network of 2000 small scale rural tourism accommodations (ECEAT Quality System), Estonia (Rural Tourism Quality System) Ukraine (Danube Delta Ecotourism Network). Kyrgyzsztan (Community Based Network)

Tour~Link Towards a sustainable tourism supply chain South Africa (starting project for the FFTSA, a fair trade network representing about 20 tourism suppliers), Western Africa (starting project, introduction of framework for sustainable tourism quality systems) 2 Slovakian micro-regions where sustainable tourism development goals were set A Serbian eco-destination where sustainable tourism development goals were set

Tour~Link Towards a sustainable tourism supply chain Some new concepts New concepts were needed to find out which measures the tourism sectors should prioritize to take responsibility for sustainable development Absolute priority should be given to those actions that have high impact on priority sustainable tourism development goals and that are, at the same time, easy to implement Therefor the amount of points gained in a quality system for certain investments in sustainable development (weights) is defined as the sustainability priority multiplied by the feasibility of the measures

Tour~Link Towards a sustainable tourism supply chain Some new concepts The stakeholders in the destination must identify a set of sustainable tourism development goals. The priority of a goal depends (1) on the impact that the sector has on the related sustainability indicators relative to other sectors. and (2) on the space for improvement that the sector still can use to influence the indicators. For example tourism has a large range of roles to influence employment (e.g. fair trade policies)

Tour~Link Towards a sustainable tourism supply chain Some new concepts Finally the impact of the sectors on SD indicators are identified in multi-sector workshops according to (1) the highest urgency of these indicators (e.g. employment has a very high urgency in poor countries)... Multiplied with (2) the highest identified influence of each sector on the SD indicators. For example tourism is relative to other sectors a major employer in ecotourism regions and has thus most responsibility for this indicator.

Tour~Link Towards a sustainable tourism supply chain The ECEAT model in formula Example South African ecotourism region Use of local services = Priority x Easy to implement ? = Unemployment high x Sector has large resp. + Many roles free Weight = Priority x Feasibility Priority = Urgency X Responsibility + Impact Improvement Space Impact

Tour~Link Towards a sustainable tourism supply chain The model units The units used as input to this model are ideally given by several participatory multi-criteria analyses. An example is the ECEAT system Eastern Europe.

Tour~Link Towards a sustainable tourism supply chain The model units for “feasibility” Arguments of sector meeting Percentage of points attributed to this cluster 1: Difficult feasibility 2. Arguments against and in favour 3. Only arguments in favour

Tour~Link Towards a sustainable tourism supply chain Conclusions The weights of social and economic criteria are relatively high in development countries (because of high urgency). The weights of environmental and nature protection criteria are relatively high in “developed” countries (high feasibility). The weights of communication and awareness raising on sustainability are generally higher than the ones of technical investments (because of a large range of possible improvement roles).

Thanks for your attention ! The differences of %-weights of measures between the environmental criteria of the ECEAT model and an environmental LCA driven model can therefor be more than 10 times! Examples where ECEAT criteria score much higher: demonstration of renewable energy applications, discounts given to guests arriving by bicycle or public transport and availability of information on public transport...