As an Island nation which is predominately accessible by air, it is of paramount importance to the Irish tourism industry that we work together to produce more sustainable outcomes. Especially as the topic of sustainability is one which is becoming more and more relevant for both the business and leisure tourist.
We at Visit Cork acknowledge our responsibility as Cork’s official tourism body to encourage, develop and establish sustainable practices in our own operations and in Cork tourism as a whole. We aim to have Cork recognised as a leader in social, environmental and economic sustainability for both business and leisure tourism.
Our sustainability journey began in 2018 when we along with the other Convention Bureaux of Ireland, joined the GDS-Index which is the leading sustainability benchmarking and improvement programme for destinations around the world. It is used to assess current social and environmental performance of a destination, and then to drive enhanced performance. While also being a powerful tool for clients to assess the sustainability of destinations to visit or meet in.
As part of improving our standing in the GDS-Index, we have recently created a Visit Cork Sustainability Strategy 2020 – 2023 and a Visit Cork Sustainability Policy. These documents are a vision and action plan for increasing sustainability throughout Cork tourism and events by working with the industry to produce and develop more sustainable outcomes. These documents will be regularly updated and we would love to hear feedback on them by emailing info@visitcork.ie
One of out most important steps along our sustainability journey was creating a sustainability policy. This is something we will be encouraging all of our tourism partners to have and to assist with this, please use the below GDS-Index infographic that will help identify what your new or updated sustainability policy should include:
As part of our focus on sustainability we will also be working with meeting and event planners to create more sustainable business tourism in Cork. To do this we will follow the below GDS-Index Regenerative Event Checklist:
Finally here are some other resources which may be helpful to our partners in improving sustainability in tourism and events:
