United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO)

World Tourism Organisation

23 Member Companies

7 Non-governmental organisations act as supporting partners

The mission of the Tour Operators Initiative is to advance the sustainable development and management of tourism, and to encourage tour operators to make a corporate commitment to sustainable development.

The mission will be achieved by pursuing the following strategic objectives:

To assist tour operators in implementation of sustainable tourism through adoption of best practices in their internal operations and management of the supply chain, and in destinations;

To broaden the support for sustainable development among other players in the tourism sector, including tourists; and

To create the critical mass of committed tour operators.

Prepared a collection of good practice case studies to show some of the ways that members are trying to put into practice their commitments to sustainable development.

Held a workshop on "Sustainable Development in Practice" in 2001. The workshop was organised to identify the steps, as well as the obstacles and possible solutions, for putting sustainable development into practice in the tour operator members' companies.

Prepared internal Technical Reports on a variety of issues to support members' activities in sustainable development.

Created four working groups for key action areas: Sustainability Reporting, Cooperation with destinations, Supply Chain Management, and Communication.

Established partnership with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) to produce a tour operator's specific supplement to the GRI 2002 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines.

Launched the Side Pilot Project in Side, Turkey. The project aims to produce an action plan, shared by stakeholders in Side, to promote improvements in key environmental, social and economic aspects of the destination.

The Tour Operators Initiative has established concrete action plans to implement its three strategic objectives.

The programme of activities rests on 5 elements: research and information exchange; capacity building; technical support; communication; and outreach.

The initiative is funded by member companies and supporting organisations.

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