International recognition for ECO certification

Tourism Sustainability Council

ECO certification is participating in a programme to accredit national certification schemes for sustainable tourism and raise their profile amongst businesses and consumers.

The WWF (World Wildlife Fund) together with the Rainforest Alliance, United Nations Environment Programme, United Nations World Tourism Organisation and the United Nations Foundation has recently set up the Tourism Sustainability Council (TSC) to develop a programme to accredit certification schemes for sustainable tourism and raise their profile amongst business and consumers.  TSC already views the ECO certification as one of the most successful national environmental schemes in Europe  and following our participation in a recent workshop, we were invited to participate in an exercise to pilot the accreditation of the scheme.  Basically the aim is to create cross-border standards and recognition in the field of sustainable tourism, similar to what WWF have done with FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) which is today an industry standard.

Travelife

The Travelife Sustainability system is a voluntary scheme managed by the Federation of Tour Operators aimed at recognising establishments with good sustainability actions.  Today ECO certified hotels maintaining Annual Progress Reports on environmental issues (which is currently not a compulsory criterion of the ECO certification) would automatically comply with all the environmental criteria required to obtain the gold level of Travelife.