Internship Report : Sustainable Tourism Certification in Tour Operators

Abstract

Sustainable tourism is a current trend aiming at diversifying and preserving the global tourism industry by involving social responsibility, strong commitment to nature and native integration into any tourist operation or development, which means meeting the needs of the present tourist, whilst protecting and enhancing future opportunities. In a world of overbooking, habitat destruction and ever converging identical tourist products this concept has become a need to be achieved. Many companies have reached towards certifications, for a standardized process in order to best accomplished its goals. Thus, following the internship at Ytravel and involvement in the Biosphere certification process, were chosen to achieve the main objective of this report, which is understand the role of companies in the tour operator level, how they interact with the remaining sectors and their impact, how does the certification impact their protocols and processes and how in turn that effect can affect the rest of the tourism industry. As a means of self-regulation and when correlated with the sustainability concept, certification can be a great way not only of implementing regulated processes to attain a more sustainable system, but also a better way of convey/marketing it to the tourist. As major players in the tourism industry and indeed as collating players between the various tourism sectors and the tourists, tour operator level companies have the market power to drive sustainability further into the industry. This report analyses these concepts, possibilities and processes in order to make a sense of the reality behind the theory.