Wild Asia - About Wild Asia's Annual Responsible Tourism Awards

About Wild Asia's Annual Responsible Tourism Awards

by Wild Asia

Wild Asia's Responsible Tourism Awards is the only tourism award of its kind in Asia. Established by Wild Asia in 2006 with a small grant, it is now a mainstream event, comprising of workshops and an annual awards ceremony. This annual award aims to recognize accommodation operators and tour operators who are making a positive difference for our environment, people, cultures and traditions, the very thing that makes a holiday experience distinct. Our award winners and finalists have demonstrated responsibility through sustainable management best practices. We believe that in rewarding the bright sparks, more operators from the region will be encouraged to step forward and to share and inspire change from within the travel industry, beginning with operators closest to us..

Responsible Tourism Awards 2011/2012

The Wild Asia Responsible Tourism Checklist

The checklist is aligned to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) Global Sustainability Tourism Criteria and forms the basis of the Awards. It was first developed in 2003 to help provide practical guidance to tourism operators. The criteria "serves as the minimum standard that any tourism business should aspire to reach in order to protect and sustain the world's natural and cultural resources while ensuring tourism meets its potential as a tool for poverty alleviation."

The checklist serves as a self-assessment tool, to help operators determine where they stand in the quest towards responsible tourism.

Site Visits

Every year, site visits to short-listed destinations are conducted by a team of fact finders and our judging panel consisting of Wild Asia's Responsible Tourism team, an advisor, and a media person.

By visiting, experiencing and documenting best practices on-site, Wild Asia hopes to showcase these exemplary operators as inspiration to others. Meeting the locals is also a wonderful opportunity to communicate our mission more effectively.

More information on our past winners and their destinations (2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010).

Watch our RT videos!

What makes a winner?

Wild Asia "winners" are operators whom we have visited and assessed based on these following questions:

How well do you think the operator understands the social and environmental impacts of the operation?
How does the operator create a sense of place (efforts towards enriching the visitor's understanding of the destination)?
How will the efforts be sustained (are the efforts going to continue in the long term? Profitability? Leadership? Systems?)?
How does the operator communicate their efforts to the guests? (How well are guests involved in their RT journey: Openness? Transparent about success and failures?)
How well does the operator internalise their RT efforts? (Systems? Leadership? Training? How well are sustainability efforts structured into day-2-day operations?)
What is the reach of the operator's sphere of influence (the efforts to ensure that the ideas and practices are shared across the community, other businesses, local governments, etc)?
Have there been any improvements over the past few years? (Continual improvement)