Groups Join Efforts To Promote Sustainable
Tourism
(InfoWebPress) – The National Chamber of
Tourism (CANATUR) is working on the creation
of a Sustainable Tourism Office with the
goal of promoting a responsible and balanced
business activity, in which negative impacts
over natural and cultural resources are
minimized.
This organism will evaluate and unify
businesses that have received or will
receive a Sustainable Tourism Certificate
(CTS), in addition to provide training and
technical assistance for the responsible
environmental and social management,
certification standards, and sustainable
tourism marketing.
Gonzalo Vargas, president of CANATUR,
explained that currently there are 99
companies certified, and this year there are
several others being evaluated for the first
time or are being re-evaluated.
“For this purpose, both the Costa Rican
Tourism Institute (ICT) and the University
of Costa Rica (UCR) have just graduated the
first 30 students from tourism organizations
and public universities, as well as
representatives from the tourism sector, who
received the necessary training to evaluate
various tourism companies to comply with the
CST standards,” Vargas said. “There is a
growing demand from more informed and
responsible tourists, for whom their
interests go beyond a vacation, and who seek
a traveling experience and direct relation
with natural and cultural attractions of the
destination. Those are the motivations that
prompt us to guarantee more cohesion in the
sector in terms of environmental and
cultural policies.”
This effort to have human resources trained
in issues of tourism sustainability, plus
the creation of the new Sustainable Tourism
Office, will also allow certified tourism
companies to have official representation
that benefits and encourages business
efforts for sustainable tourism.
This new office also seeks to guarantee the
implementation of standards that the CST
certification demands — such as
sustainability of the physical-biological
environment, management of waste and energy
utilization, design of tourism products
according to market trends, the
participation of clients in environmental
policies, and the socioeconomic benefits of
the company in the region where it operates.
For Vargas, with the participation of all
sustainable tourism companies (and their
resources, contributions and experiences)
will allow to build a leadership core for
sustainability that would represent the
private sector within various institutions
and organizations, nationally and
internationally.
The CANATUR head added that this is a
competitiveness model based on
differentiating Costa Rica’s value-added
tourism products, which would guarantee the
country a privileged spot and leadership in
ecological tourism. “With the creation of
this specialized office within CANATUR, we
will be able to listen, with one voice,
about the strengths, opportunities,
weaknesses, threats and limitations
regarding sustainable tourism in our
sector,” he concluded.
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