As every year in March, the Berlin Messe hosted the international tourism fair ITB last week. Green Key was there to attend the launch of the Tourism 2030 Sustainable and Responsible Tourism Portal.
Herbert Hamele talking about 25 years of ECOTRANS
In 2018 the ECOTRANS Network for Sustainable Tourism Development is celebrating 25 years of European and global-level networking, policy-making and project implementation to promote responsible and sustainable tourism. ECOTRANS invited Green Key to join their celebrations and the launch of their new portal at the ITB.
The Tourism 2030 Portal is an independent website which brings together the global community of people and organisations working in sustainable tourism. Among other issues, it informs about certifications, standards and awards in sustainable tourism to help businesses and travellers to learn about and compare them. Green Key has been working with ECOTRANS for many years, especially in promoting awarded establishments on online travel agency platforms. Furthermore, Green Key participates in the TRIANGLE project, which is an European wide collaborative online system for Higher Education Institutes to offer quality tourism sustainability training.
In addition to the launch of the Tourism 2030 Portal, several members of ECOTRANS discussed the implementation of sustainable tourism to meet the SDGs in 2030 and the Paris Agreement targets. With only three policy cycles left to achieve the Global Goals, the panelists pondered whether the SDGs will remain a "fairytale" or if there will be a "fairy tale ending".