Our representative Katrin Schmitz, a certified coach, is supporting five of our DMC partners through the Travelife certification process. In the future, she will keep you up to date in this section on the topic of sustainability at Latinconnect.
Katrin, in your opinion, where does sustainability in tourism stand today?
I would say it has been better. Shortly before the pandemic, I had the impression that the various stakeholders were increasingly beginning to pull together and were simply making sustainability a requirement. In other words: a clear sustainability policy (ideally backed up by a certification) is no longer a “nice to have”, but a “must have”. On the customer side, surveys also indicated a greater willingness to base travel decisions on sustainable criteria. However, driven by the strong desire to finally travel again and to sell those trips, the topic seems to have moved somewhat into the background again on both sides.
What is the situation at Latinconnect when it comes to sustainability certifications?
We all come from countries whose tourism depends on their diverse flora and fauna, and on local employees who are open to tourism as a source of income, well trained and fairly integrated. This perhaps makes it even clearer to us how important it is to actively protect this wealth. Our partners are at different stages. Our partners in Costa Rica, Ecuador and Colombia addressed the topic early on. ARA Tours holds the highest distinction within Costa Rica’s local sustainability label CST (https://www.ict.go.cr/en/sustainability/cst.html), while Latventure Ecuador and Promotora Neptuno Colombia have recently renewed their TourCert certifications (https://www.tourcert.org).
Who are the latest candidates for certification among the Latinconnect DMCs?
After the pandemic, Caribbean Tours Cuba, Caribbean Tours Mexico and GAPA Travel Panama joined Travelife’s three-stage certification model (https://www.travelife.info). This year, Latventure Argentina and Caribbean Tours Dominican Republic have also joined. It was important to us that, like CST and TourCert, the certificate is recognised by the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) (https://www.gstcouncil.org/gstc-criteria/gstc-recognized-standards-for-tour-operators). We expect the first completed questionnaires, action plans and sustainability policies by the end of August. If the review is positive (and the policies will then be visible to all of you), this will lead to achieving the Travelife Partner Stage. After that, our goal is the Travelife Certified Stage.
Anyone who would like more insight is welcome to contact katrin.schmitz@latinconnect.com at any time.
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