Sustainable certification to cover accommodation & tour operators, to include destinations & other stakeholders later: Arvind Singh

Arvind Singh, Secretary, Tourism, has said that the national strategy and roadmap for sustainable tourism would involve a certification scheme, which would initially cover accommodations and tour operators based on sustainability criteria of India, which can later be extended to destinations and other industry stakeholders as well. “We will also work with industry, states and NGOs on information education and communication campaigns amongst the stakeholders about sustainable tourism and also the adverse environmental impact of tourism in certain parts of the country. There will also be an effort to do a state assessment and ranking, which we have seen to be successful in certain aspects of national priorities. This will be a key strategy to motivate states to adopt sustainability in tourism and it will be used to identify the status of various initiatives in the states and build their capacity and future roadmap towards better sustainable practice tourism,” he added.