Doing well is way better than doing more
In autumn 2020, when I was talking to some Scandinavian event organizers, they told me that they were getting certified in sustainable tourism and many spoke highly of the certification received with the Global Sustainable Tourism Council, so I started researching programs and courses in sustainable tourism. I love learning new tools and felt that I should learn more about the subject for several reasons: I wanted to be on the same level as the event agencies in Scandinavia in terms of sustainability, I felt it was my duty to learn more about how I can improve on sustainability issues with my company and because it is a topic of the utmost relevance and necessity.
On September 22, 2021 I began my online training called “Sustainable Tourism Training” taught by the GSTC, where I shared classes with other 28 professional colleagues from the world of tourism from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Spain and Sweden. At the end of the 4 weeks of the program, we all received an assistance qualification that I complemented with a certificate of knowledge by taking an exam and granted by the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) and which certifies a deep understanding of the criteria and principles of the standard global benchmark for internships in the travel and tourism industry. Thank you Jorge Möller, Leonardo Latorre and Natalia Naranjo for the classes and good learning.
Not everything in tourism goes for the economic benefit
The program consisted of 4 pillars: effective management, socio-economic, cultural and environmental sustainability. Almost always when we talk about sustainability we think only about the effects on the environment and we forget that it covers many more aspects of equal importance. We cannot forget that tourism has an impact in many areas and that we have to mitigate that impact, respect the natural ecosystem, take care of people and compensate for those effects that will always exist no matter how hard we try to reduce them.
At MAX Tourism we have been trying for several years to work with sustainable companies such as Mas Salagros EcoResort and recently we promoted Oller del Mas, two tourism companies with great responsibility in terms of respect for the environment. From 2017 to 2019 we represented Princess Barcelona and Negresco Princess, which does a great job in the field of social and corporate social responsibility. We also support Origin’All Spirit, which is a company with the aim of creating a network of small local businesses that offer services for corporate groups in Catalonia. At the moment we are searching for more sustainable hotels that want to grow with the Scandinavian MICE market and connect them with the event agencies that usually organize their trips to Spain. If you are interested contact us at valeska@max-tourism.com. We are waiting for you!
