The Global Sustainable Tourism Council has begun developing a set of standards that can be used to award sustainability certification for corporate travel programmes.
The non-profit organisation manages a set of global standards, which it calls “criteria”, for sustainable travel and tourism, and also provides international accreditation for sustainable tourism certification bodies. Criteria are already in place for industry players such as hotels and tour operators, and for tourism destinations, and a draft set for meetings and events is in the consultation phase.
GSTC Business Travel Working Group co-chair Marijke Poppink, a travel management consultant, said the group hopes to create a guideline document for company managed travel programmes within six to nine months. Travel managers will be able to begin working from the guidelines before they are finalised as a document that can be used as a formal basis for certification.
“We are now having conversations with different associations and organisations to get their support and input on how to achieve alignment at industry level and move forward,” said Poppink, who added that the group would welcome volunteers interested in contributing to the corporate travel programme criteria.
Peter Skieller, the working group’s other co-chair and also a consultant, said: “We want to get feedback on the possibility for companies to get their travel programme certified so they can show they are working systematically with sustainability. It can help internally. For a lot of travel managers it is difficult to get buy-in [for developing a sustainability strategy for business travel]. With certification you can show this is a way to get there.”
In common with GSTC’s other criteria, the corporate travel programme criteria will cover social, economic and cultural aspects of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, as well as environmental.
Correction: An earlier version of this story wrongly stated that GSTC offers certification itself. GSTC offers an accreditation service to certification bodies.