Sustainable tourism: prepare for GSTC certification with AnCodea

For whom and why?

The new service is aimed at public decision-makers, tourist destination managers, hotels and tour operators. 

To offer them a facilitating solution to assess their level of sustainable tourism practice and implement an improvement action plan. If necessary, to prepare for GSTC.

The service will be extended to players in the "MICE" and "ATTRACTION" markets in the 1st quarter of 2024!

The service

English is the official language of the certification stages leading to formal recognition of sustainable practices, and certification audits are carried out using the original grids GSTC grids in English, regardless of the country or language of the organization.

On AnCodea, each criterion of the French version is coupled with its English version. This means there's no risk of misinterpretation due to translations proposed by the GSTC !

In France Bureau Veritas is one of the certification bodies accredited by the GSTC.

Here are two useful links for more information

> Certification

> Accredited certification organization, including Bureau Veritas in France

GSTC Criteria

• serve as a basis for certifying sustainability.
• to serve as general guidelines for businesses of all sizes to move towards more sustainable practices, and to help businesses choose sustainable tourism programs that meet these global criteria.
• promote better access to the growing market for sustainable products, by guiding both travelers and travel agencies to choose reliable sustainable tourism providers, programs and businesses.
• help consumers identify reliable sustainable tourism programs and businesses.
• serve as a common denominator for information organizations to identify sustainable tourism providers.
• support certification and other voluntary programs to ensure they have standards that meet a widely accepted frame of reference.
• provide governmental, non-governmental and private-sector programs with a starting point for developing sustainable tourism prescriptions.
• serve as general guidelines for education and training organizations, such as hotel schools and universities.
• show the way to encourage other players to move in the right direction

Since each tourist destination has its own culture, environment, customs and laws, the GSTC CRITERIA Criteria are designed to be adapted to local conditions and supplemented by additional criteria for the specific location and activity.

These Criteria have been developed and revised in line with the standards development system of the ISEAL Alliance, the competent body that provides guidance on global standards for the development of sustainability criteria in all sectors. 

The Criteria are revised every three to five years. The revision schedule and advance registration for public contributions to future revisions are available at www.gstcouncil.org.

The story of our commitment

Franck and I created AnCodea to make life easier for organizations with strong values or wishing to commit to voluntary progress initiatives. Values we share and actions we support.

Simplify, accelerate, professionalize, encourage commitment to meaningful projects: these are the objectives we have set ourselves for our customers, and to which every service and feature we develop must respond.

We work hand in hand with our users, in a participative approach and a spirit of co-construction, to meet their needs as closely as possible.

By joining GSTCwe wanted the network to benefit from our expertise in digitizing Quality tools and processes. 

We hope that this new service, available in French and soon in other languages, will meet the expectations of all those involved in the sector!