The Seven Best Practices for Sustainable Destinations
When we first published The Top Seven Best Practices of Sustainable Tourism Destinations in 2021, sustainable tourism was a growing priority. Five years later, it has become a baseline expectation.
The expectations of today’s traveller have fundamentally changed. Booking.com’s 2025 research shows that 93 percent want to make more sustainable choices, 69 percent want to leave destinations better than they found them, and 73 percent want their spending to benefit local communities. For the first time, more than half are also conscious of tourism’s impact on local communities, not just the environment.
Destinations are feeling this shift. Through our work with leading regions, including Vancouver, Coast & Mountains, Ontario’s Southwest, and Tourisme Montréal, we have seen first-hand how destinations are putting these practices into action to strengthen their environmental, social, cultural, and economic performance. These examples highlight how the best practices outlined five years ago continue to hold true today, while also demonstrating how destinations are adapting them to better respond to current challenges, stakeholder expectations, and the growing recognition of sustainability as an essential part of destination management.
After fifteen years supporting tourism organizations at every level, one thing is clear: sustainable tourism is no longer a niche focus. It is now a core part of destination management and long-term competitiveness, and the seven best practices at the heart of GreenStep’s programs remain as relevant as ever.
Seven Best Practices for Sustainable Tourism Destinations
1. Engage, Educate, and Consult with Stakeholders
Sustainability begins with collaboration. Establishing a permanent tourism destination stakeholder committee helps ensure diverse representation and shared responsibility. This group should include members from the destination management organization (DMO), local government, Indigenous governments, community organizations, and tourism businesses. Representatives from provincial, state, or national governments can also provide valuable input and alignment.
Providing training on sustainable tourism principles helps build a common understanding of both the opportunities and risks that come with action. Regular meetings create transparency, strengthen relationships, and ensure that sustainability remains part of ongoing destination planning and decision-making.
Destination BC’s Community Destination Stewardship Initiative (Project 4) is a great example of building stakeholder training. Their Tourism Climate Resiliency Program brings together communities across British Columbia to build capacity in climate resiliency and sustainable tourism through workshops, facilitated discussions, and peer learning. Participation is open to any community or organization involved in managing visitors, including CDMOs, municipal governments, First Nations, and economic development corporations, and welcomes communities at all experience levels, reinforcing an inclusive, collaborative, and educational approach to destination stewardship.
2. Establish a Baseline
In order to understand your current reality, it is important to undertake a baseline analysis of your sustainability performance. This helps identify where your destination is performing well and where there are opportunities for improvement.
A great example is the Vancouver, Coast and Mountains tourism region, which began its journey by completing GreenStep’s Free Sustainability Score. This quick but comprehensive assessment helped them understand what they were doing well and where they had room to improve. The Score is based on GSTC-recognized criteria, which provide a structured way to evaluate sustainability across management, social and economic factors, nature and culture, and environmental impacts.
3. Set Clear Goals and Identify Specific Actions
Once a baseline is established, the next step is to set clear goals and define the actions needed to achieve them. These goals should align with your destination’s broader development strategy and reflect community priorities. Stakeholders should be involved in setting these goals to ensure shared ownership and accountability. The resulting sustainability strategy and action plan can then guide the destination toward measurable improvements in economic, social, cultural, and environmental performance.
Ontario’s Southwest Regional Tourism Organization developed a comprehensive Sustainability Strategy Report that is now informing their current actions. This work includes defined goals, targets, and an action plan that will guide the region for the next several years. The strategy focuses on three key areas: building a strong sustainability management system and ecosystem, engaging and educating businesses, residents, and visitors, and integrating sustainability into land use and infrastructure planning.
4. Implement, Monitor, and Measure
After setting goals and creating an action plan, implementation becomes the priority. Integrating sustainability into regular planning, operations, and reporting processes helps ensure it becomes part of daily decision-making rather than a separate initiative.
Progress should be reviewed at least annually to track results and measure impacts. Reassessing sustainability performance each year helps determine whether actions are leading to positive change and identifies where adjustments are needed.
This process creates a culture of continuous improvement and ensures that sustainability remains an active and measurable priority.
5. Publicly Report on Progress
Transparency is key to building trust and credibility, which is why destinations should publicly report on their sustainability goals, actions, and outcomes. Integrating sustainability metrics into regular reporting, whether quarterly, annually, or as part of broader destination performance reports, helps demonstrate accountability and reinforces a destination’s commitment to responsible tourism.
Many destinations choose to begin by signing on to the Sustainable Tourism 2030 Pledge or the Glasgow Declaration, both of which offer simple annual reporting frameworks.
However you choose to report, it is important to include information about your baseline, goals, key performance indicators, and the progress you have made over time. Sharing this information not only celebrates success and attracts recognition but also keeps residents, visitors, and partners informed and engaged.
6. Engage and Support Tourism Businesses
Tourism businesses play a critical role in achieving destination-level sustainability goals. Encouraging operators to conduct their own sustainability assessments helps them understand their performance and identify areas for improvement.
Using a consistent framework, such as the Free Score, or taking it a step further and supporting businesses through a full assessment like the Sustainable Tourism Pathway for Businesses allows destinations to aggregate results and gain insight into collective strengths and gaps. This information can then guide training, workshops, or support programs for local businesses.
This approach is reflected in Ontario, where the Tourism Industry Association of Ontario (TIAO) has partnered with GreenStep to make certification more accessible to tourism businesses and organizations across the province. By providing clear certification pathways and encouraging broad participation, TIAO is helping businesses strengthen their competitiveness while contributing to a more sustainable and reputable tourism sector in Ontario.
As more businesses adopt sustainability practices, they strengthen both their competitiveness and the destination’s overall reputation.
7. Pursue Certification and Continuous Improvement
Once the foundational elements are in place, destinations can begin progressing through the Sustainable Tourism Pathway for Destinations, a structured framework designed to guide tourism offices and communities through continuous sustainability improvement. Pursuing a certification or label validates that a destination meets international sustainability standards and adds credibility to its efforts.
A recent example comes from Tourisme Montréal, which announced in March 2025 that the destination achieved Silver-level certification from GreenStep with a score of 74 percent, the highest score ever recorded for a destination certified through the program. This assessment evaluated both the destination’s tourism strategy and the practices of the tourism organization itself. In addition, Tourisme Montréal has achieved Platinum-level certification at the organizational level, demonstrating leadership in sustainable tourism management.
For many destinations, the value of the pathway lies in the guidance, benchmarking, and continuous improvement process it provides. It allows tourism leaders to understand where they stand today, prioritize actions, and demonstrate progress to stakeholders, partners, and visitors.
Ultimately, the Sustainable Tourism Pathway is not about reaching a single milestone. It is about creating an ongoing cycle of measurement, improvement, and collaboration that helps destinations remain competitive while protecting the natural and cultural assets that make them unique.
Protecting our Greatest Assets
As John De Vial, Director of Financial Protection and Financial Services, of ABTA has said:
“If the product, our destinations, aren’t protected in environmental and social terms, people won’t want to visit them. It’s as simple as that.”
Five years on from our original publication, that statement is more relevant than ever.
Tourism depends on the health of the environments, cultures, and communities that attract visitors in the first place. By embedding sustainability into every aspect of destination management, we protect these assets for future generations and ensure that tourism remains a force for good.
Implementing these best practices requires coordination, commitment, and ongoing support. Many destinations today are looking for practical ways to move from intention to action while aligning their work with international frameworks such as the GSTC Destination Criteria.
To support this shift, GreenStep recently launched Destination360, a program that brings together the tools, assessments, expert guidance, and reporting frameworks DMOs need to engage stakeholders, establish baselines, implement strategies, and track measurable progress.
Traveler expectations have changed. The destinations that respond with clear commitments and measurable action are the ones that will remain competitive, credible, and worth visiting for generations to come.
