Sustainable Tourism and Ecotourism Certification: Raising Standards and Benefits

While the increasing number of tourism certification programmmes has allowed for bottom-up initiatives among local players involved with sustainable tourism efforts, in doing so, it has led to market confusion, and high start-up costs. In order to understand how to best set high standards for sustainable tourism and ecotourism certification programmmes around the world, and to make these programmmes widely beneficial, the Rainforest Alliance has spearheaded a feasibility study for a global tourism accreditation body, entitled the Sustainable Tourism Stewardship Council. © 2003 X. Font et al.