Home NEWS Pioneering destinations honoured in third round of Global Destination Sustainability Index awards

Pioneering destinations honoured in third round of Global Destination Sustainability Index awards

Nov 15, 2018

For the third year running, the winners of the GDS-Index awards were announced during the Closing Ceremony of the ICCA Congress, held in 2018 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The prestigious awards showcase the remarkable sustainability initiatives of convention bureaus and destination marketing organisations from across the globe, with the aim of sharing best practices to inspire the meeting and events industry.

The industry is increasingly beginning to recognise that even though tourism has an important impact on a country’s economy or destination marketing, it equally impacts the environment through its extensive use of resources needed to sustain the needs of its visitors and local communities. The Global Destination Sustainability Index works with convention bureaus and destination marketing organisations to address this issue, allowing them to maximise the positive impacts of tourism whilst balancing the negative impacts through a sustainable approach to strategy. The GDS-Index is also a very useful partner for associations who wish to understand to what extent a destination will be able to support them on their sustainability journey.

The Global Destination Sustainability Index gives out three awards each year to those destinations that go above and beyond to ensure that their practices incorporate a strong sustainability element. The winners of the GDS-Index awards in 2018 are:

Innovation Award: Copenhagen

The judging panel, made up of industry experts, have voted for Copenhagen this year to win the Innovation Award. Wonderful Copenhagen released a bold long-term strategy: “Tourism for good”. The ambition of this strategy is to “make tourism part of the solutions for a sustainable future, not a part of the problem. Tourism is not a goal in itself, it is a means to a sustainable end”. The plan looks at how the destination and their stakeholders can contribute to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and sets targets and actions for the next three years.

The jury was also impressed by the runner-up projects presented by Helsinki and Sydney.

Leadership Award: Gothenburg

For the third year, Gothenburg Convention Bureau is still leading the way, setting the pace as well as sharing best practice in the industry. Goteborg & Co are pioneers and have inspired the Index with their unique integration of sustainability into their business practices.

Most Improved Destination Award: Goyang CVB

Goyang Convention Bureau, who joined the GDS-Index in 2017, has significantly improved their performance and made tremendous efforts in advancing their sustainability initiatives. Goyang improved their overall performance by 17% and their CVB performance by an impressive 40%, mainly by formalising a sustainability strategy for the destination, putting in place tools to measure performance, and building capacity through industry trainings.

Dublin’s performance must also to be mentioned: they were a very close runner-up with a 16% overall performance increase and 36% increase in CVB performance.

GDS-Index Director Mélanie Delaplanche said: “The GDS-Index is keeping the strong momentum going with more than 50 destinations benchmarked in 2018. With a growing number of US destinations joining the rankings, such as Washington DC and Monterey County joining the Index this year. We are delighted to welcome more destinations from very different places of the globe: Bangkok, Dubai, St Petersburg but also more European destinations: Monaco, Ljubljana; Ireland is showing a strong commitment to sustainability, with Shannon, Cork, Galway and Kerry now on the Index.”

ICCA Interim CEO Dennis Speet said: “As we encourage our members to put sustainability at their top of their agendas, we are proud to host the announcements of the Global Destination Sustainability Index awards at the ICCA Congress for the third time. I would like to wish congratulations to the three winners and the runners-up, who have displayed incredible ingenuity in improving their sustainability benchmark for the benefit of their destination’s ability to both attract more meetings and improve the quality of life for the local community.”