Learning from others is essential for all industries, also for sustainable tourism. Exploring inspiring examples from other countries and companies in the form of benchmarking and best practices can offer valuable lessons and give insights into sustainable tourism.

In the ENRICHER hubs project, coordinated by Haaga-Helia, we have produced a best practice report (Enricher 6.8.2024) together with our EU partners from Austria and Italy. The report contains 3 government and 10 company examples addressing the gaps in sustainable tourism service development in the target countries of the project, Moldova and Georgia. Both countries still need guidance on the way towards sustainable tourism.

National and regional support for sustainability

First and foremost, sustainable tourism development requires guidance and frameworks at the national or regional level. Governmental support is available in the EU, but it is still lacking in Georgia and Moldova, as mentioned in the Status Quo report of the current state of tourism in the target countries (Enricher 31.7.2024).

Finland is an example of a country where national frameworks rule. In Finland, tourism service providers perform and think in accordance with legislation and government sustainability objectives and National Tourism Board policies with the STF (Sustainable Travel Finland) label.

For Finnish tourism businesses and destinations, the STF label offers a framework that provides a useful manual of how to attain sustainability. It includes broad sustainability concepts, standards, metrics, instruction, and assessment procedures. These materials help tourism companies identify and incorporate sustainable practices into their regular business operations.

Our EU project partners Austria and Italy, both very popular tourism destination countries, also have national guidelines for sustainable tourism development and Italy even has a Ministry for Tourism. Unlike Finland, though, the focus is more on the regional level, as regions have considerable autonomy in both countries. There are regions, like Tyrol in Austria, that have a long history with high volume tourism. Tyrol already has advanced sustainable tourism practices in place, for example sustainability managers and certified sustainability experts in its DMOs (destination management organisations).

Company cases highlight sustainability activities

The role of company examples is highlighted in the best practice report as they are the places where the hands-on sustainability work is done. All in all, the report includes 10 best practice company cases from Austria, Finland and Italy. They aim to address the themes and topics that are relevant to Moldova and Georgia, e.g., rural, wine and mountain tourism. We already wrote about the Finnish examples in our previous blog post.

While the discussions of sustainable tourism in Georgia and Moldova still revolve mostly around environmental issues, the EU countries are already focusing on all three levels of sustainability. The Italian examples include a tour operator addressing accessibility and inclusivity and the Austrian ones include a hotel that addresses all the SDGs (sustainable development goals) in its operations. From Finland we have included the Flow Festival as a best practice for a sustainable event as they are tackling sustainability issues from many angles and through proactive measures for diversity, equality and combating climate change.

Even though the sustainability practices are often at an advanced level in many EU countries, the research on best practices also showed us some of the challenges that companies face and the reasons why they might not choose to undertake sustainability initiatives. When putting the report together, we learnt how the chosen companies tackle those challenges to make sustainability an opportunity to grow and prosper.

The report will help us highlight many important sustainability issues in the upcoming training sessions. We aim to use the best practice examples to show how companies are dealing with the challenges and opportunities with concrete actions.

The journey towards sustainability continues

The various best practice cases – along with the Status Quo report addressing the gaps in sustainable tourism development in the target countries – provide interesting learning opportunities for all project partners. Even though governmental support is lacking in Georgia and regulations are putting obstacles on the way in Moldova, increasing awareness and education are vital elements on the road towards sustainable development of tourism.

In the next phase of the project, we are designing a training package that will enhance the capacities and capabilities of the Georgian and Moldovan tourism lecturers and students to make tourism service development more responsible.