FOREWORD
 Tourism certification schemes aim to make tourism operations more
sustainable. The schemes allow businesses that meet or exceed specific
standards to use a marketable logo to demonstrate their environmental and
social credentials and hence enable consumers to identify responsible tourism
operations. Such schemes can therefore play an important role in making
tourism more sustainable by providing participating businesses with an action
plan for improvement which is linked to market incentives.
In 2008, the World Tourism Organization reported that tourism is the largest
business sector in the world economy. It employs 200 million people, generates
US$3.6 trillion in economic activity, and accounts for one in every 12 jobs. The
industry is especially important to developing countries since it is the principal
foreign exchange earner for 83% of them. The same report states that “the Asia
and Pacific region was the world’s second best-performing region in 2007. And it
included the world’s two best-performing subregions: Southeast Asia and Northeast
Asia.” To sustain growth, however, tourism requires large amounts of infrastructure
including hotels, roads, parking lots, and restaurants, which typically result in a
number of negative consequences such as increased pollution levels, destruction
of natural habitats and subsequent displacement of wildlife, and undesirable
influences on once-remote cultures. Certification helps reduce the prospects for
such consequences given the awareness measures included within it.
Because of the importance of tourism certification for APO member countries, the
Asian Productivity Organization (APO) conducted a workshop on Green Tourism and
Certification in August 2008 in Kathmandu to increase the awareness of those in
government agencies of such schemes. The participants strongly recommended the
development of a manual to help governments develop certification schemes.
The seminar found that existing sustainable tourism and eco-tourism certification
programs have considerable overlap and commonality. New ones should not
reinvent the wheel; rather they should draw on the basic components to develop
a certification scheme tailored to specific operational needs. Key factors are:
accessibility and usability, especially for SMEs; feasibility of the unit of certification
(e.g., holiday, destination, or company); applicability at the local level; focus on
performance as well as process; focus on environmental and sociocultural criteria;
iterative revision of criteria for progressive improvement of standards; input from
multiple stakeholders; transparency; and independent third-party verification.
Based on those key factors, the APO produces this manual to explain the stepby-
step approach to develop certification schemes for enterprises involved in
tourism. The APO hopes that it will be helpful to governments as well as local
enterprises in developing and/or improving certification standards for the
tourism industry in member countries.
Shigeo Takenaka
Secretary-General
Tokyo, June 2009
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