BARCELONA -- The events that unfolded here last week might best be described as Ted Turner's ambitious effort to reduce clutter.
The media tycoon says there are currently more than 100 definitions of "sustainable tourism" and a fair number of businesses peddling sustainable certification programs with wildly varying criteria.
While this proliferation of guidelines and services no doubt reflects a surge in demand from travel industry suppliers who want to behave responsibly, it has also both muddled the measurement of the industry's progress toward sustainability and reduced the usefulness of certification as a marketing tool.
The plethora of definitions and certifying bodies is causing consumers to wonder if any of the seals of approval that appear on resort brochures are worth the recycled paper on which they're printed.
"Some are good, some are bad," Turner said. "None are universal."
Last week, Turner stood before 8,000 government officials, representatives from nonprofit groups, business leaders and academics gathered here for the World Conservation Congress and announced a framework that defines how a travel and tourism company must behave if it wants to be certified a sustainable operation.
The definition was developed under the auspices of the United Nations Foundation, a nongovernmental organization that Turner created 11 years ago as a mechanism to make a $1 billion donation to the United Nations.
He said that although the effort was being coordinated by the foundation, the actual guidelines had been established by a coalition of 26 organizations, including industry players such as Hyatt Hotels and Resorts, Choice Hotels, Expedia, Sabre/Travelocity, ASTA and the American Hotel & Lodging Association.
The coalition, called the Global Partnership for Sustainable Tourism Criteria, received input from 2,500 conservationists, industry leaders, governmental authorities and U.N. bodies before developing the guidelines. Drafts of the document went to 80,000 people for comment before the final document was produced.
Though the final work is trumpeted as criteria, it more properly might be seen as a framework. In its current state, it is mostly bone and little meat: It lacks benchmarks and data-based guidelines to measure compliance.
Yet it's very possible that within this U.N. Foundation document lies the basis for what will ultimately become the defined terms for sustainable tourism certification throughout the industry and throughout the world. In other words, it is a very big deal.
Although the announcement was framed and celebrated as if the goals of the coalition had been met, the overriding sense of the coalition members in Barcelona last week was summed up by Erika Harms, the executive director for sustainable development within the U.N. Foundation: "Now the real work must begin."
Perhaps the greatest accomplishment thus far was getting 26 organizations of diverse backgrounds and interests -- private enterprises, nongovernmental organizations, governments and associations -- to come up with 40 points on which they could all agree. That effort took 15 months. (By way of comparison, the complex negotiations that resulted in the $700 billion Wall Street bailout took about 15 days.)
What comes next was summed up by Jeffrey Glueck, Travelocity's chief marketing officer: "We need to take these criteria and turn them into indicators to start benchmarking. The categories have been selected, but the cutoff levels within these categories have not. Ultimately, we'll have to work with auditing bodies to set minimum standards and pilot some of these criteria before we can be operational."
Glueck added: "The key task going forward is to help a consumer separate green from 'greenwash.' And not only consumers; it could be businesses that are looking to put their employees in a sustainable city hotel."
One aspect that underscores the unique qualities of this particular coalition is that while the members each seem to envision a different path to success, those paths do not necessarily conflict.
The U.N. Foundation's Harms, who has spent her entire career working in or with governments, appeared convinced that it would be governments that will drive acceptance of the program.
"The reality is that there are so many kinds of travel enterprises out there that the easiest way to do it is if their government is behind" promoting the standards, Harms said.
At a press conference before Turner made his announcement, Francesco Frangialli, secretary general of the U.N. World Tourism Organization, said his group would "put this to the consideration of our general assembly and its 153 member states."
Smiling, Harms replied, "We appreciate the offer, and we certainly will take you up on it."
But Harms also believes in the "complementary values behind having [nongovernmental organizations], governments, industry and the media work together."
Travelocity's Glueck literally wants to take a leaf from the Costa Rican government's ecology rating system for hotels and use it to drive acceptance of the U.N. Foundation standards through Sabre's reservation systems and the company's consumer websites.
Costa Rica, in addition to assigning star ratings for hotel quality and amenities, has a "leaf" system, assigning one to five leaves as a measure of a hotel's ecofriendliness. Glueck believes that if Sabre and its consumer sites, such as Travelocity and Lastminute.com, were to begin putting leaves next to the hotels they listed, the hotels would line up to get certification.
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