Ede Principles.

To celebrate its 15th anniversary, Retour organized a conference called: “Building partnerships for sustainable tourism” which took place in Ede, the Netherlands from January 8 to 10.

40 People met, from 20 different countries, representing many stakes in the development of sustainable tourism worldwide. They saw their responsibilities in sustainable tourism expressed in the documents that emerged from the UN-CSD and related conferences like the World Eco-tourism Summit, leading up to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg 2002. They prioritized the calls coming from these documents and then put them up for consideration by tour-operators, representing both mainstream and niche markets at the Dutch Holiday Fair, in order to create a basis for partnerships between tour-operators and other stakeholders, based on concrete actions.

The concrete actions to be undertaken by tour-operators, formulated during these days were:

-          Training of guides in issues of sustainability

-          Raising pre-trip awareness of tourists on issues of sustainability

-          Development of a corporate social responsibility policy

-          Adopt responsibility for capacity building of local partners

-          Selection of local partners on sustainable behavior

-          Enhance product quality through diversification of itineraries

You can download the complete report of the conference.