The Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) is pleased to announce a partnership as undersigned in a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), a not-for-profit trade membership association headquartered in Bangkok, Thailand. PATA Chief Executive Officer Martin Craigs and GSTC Board Member Guy Chester signed the MoU on April 26 during the PATA Annual Summit in Bangkok.
The MoU details three main areas of cooperation between the two organizations:
• PATA’s support and endorsement of GSTC’s sustainability criteria,
• Joint advocacy and policy development, and
• Collaborative awareness efforts regarding sustainability practices.
Among the various collaborative efforts currently being planned, the GSTC is developing a webinar about the GSTC’s recognized standards that will be presented to PATA’s members at the Bangkok headquarters in July. The GSTC’s standards are the only global sustainable tourism criteria in the world recognized by the United Nations. The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) are permanent members of the Council, and both are officially represented in its Board of Directors.
“PATA’s reputation for promoting responsible development of travel and tourism, coupled with its prominence in the Asia Pacific region, will increase GSTC’s reach to other tourism partners in moving global sustainability efforts forward,” GSTC Board Chair Dr Kelly Bricker said. “Our collaboration with this large and established travel trade association will certainly provide new opportunities to learn from each other and share sustainability practices within this culturally rich and biologically diverse region of the world,” she said.
PATA Chief Executive Officer Martin Craigs echoed Bricker’s remarks regarding the expansion of sustainability efforts in Asian Pacific markets.
“Balanced intelligent growth via sustainability is at the core of the visitor economy. I am consequently delighted to have GSTC as a new value-adding partner for PATA,” PATA Chief Executive Officer Martin Craigs said. “GSTC’s sustainability benchmarking work in recent years is widely admired and very pragmatic. PATA has a proud 40-plus year history of pragmatic engagement on sustainability issues. Together with GSTC, we will strive to guide stakeholders in the Asia Pacific visitor economy between people, profits and planet,” he said.
Source / Fuente: etravelblackboard.com
Author / Autor: etravelblackboard.com
Date / Fecha: 28/04/13
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