CTO celebrates winning the silver award for ‘Best Destination’ for responsible tourism
The Cyprus Tourism Organisation, being the responsible body for promoting Cyprus, is proud to be the winner of the Silver Award as the ‘Best Destination for Responsible Tourism’ which was announced at the prestigious World Responsible Tourism Awards ceremony, held on 4th November, 2015, at the World Travel Market, the leading global event for the travel industry.
The purpose of the World Responsible Tourism Awards is to recognise, reward, inspire and challenge parties involved in sustainable tourism. The judging is undertaken by a group of renowned experts, with a rigorous judging process, based on:
- Real change: The panel are looking for evidence of real change, businesses which can convincingly demonstrate positive impacts, or reduced negative impacts, quantified wherever possible.
- Replicability: The Awards aim to inspire change, we seek to identify examples of best practice which can be replicated across the sector and around the world.
- Innovation: The judges are looking for innovative practices that make a real difference, the Awards highlight new good practices, which the judges believe, can, and should, become common practice.
- Influence: Businesses and organisations that are not only doing good work themselves, but are using their influence to ensure their peers and suppliers do the same.
- Sustainability & longevity: The judges seek to Award those businesses that understand that taking responsibly for tourism is a long journey, that it encompasses the economic, social and environmental impacts of their activities and who have a clear vision for the long-term success of the work, with future targets and plans in place.
- Overall commitment to responsible tourism: Alongside the category-specific focus, there needs to be a clear overall commitment to positively impacting local communities, economies, cultures and environments.
This year there was an exceptionally high number of applicants exceeding 500 in 13 categories, which makes Cyprus’ achievement particularly rewarding.
The Best destination for responsible tourism category is awarded to a holiday destination setting an inspirational and influential example for responsible tourism.
This category is for those destinations who put their unique community and environment at the heart of exciting and memorable tourism experiences; places which use tourism to create better conditions for people to live in and better places for people to visit. Whether a village, town, city, region or country, the Best destination category is looking for places that inspire and promote responsible holiday experiences that celebrate and protect the best of their destination.
The judges are looking for a destination with a committed and broad integrated approach to responsible tourism, one that inspires and excites, and provides an example of best practice for other destinations around the world.
The Award is recognition of the Cyprus Tourism Organisation’s continuing efforts and commitment to create a sustainable tourist product, assisted to a great extent by its 5-year partnership with the Travel Foundation, in co-operation with the Cyprus Sustainable Tourism Initiative (CSTI).The Award will give CTO the platform and strength to continue its efforts towards creating and establishing products and services with vision that will secure the long-term viability of our destination.
The Award Ceremony, which was attended by over 500 people, had extensive media coverage led by the BBC.
Full details can be found on: www.worldresponsibletourismawards.com