Over 70 stakeholders from across the country attended January’s forum for the future of sustainability for Business Tourism in Ireland. The day was filled with bags of energy and inspiration, all kicked off by Fáilte Ireland’s very own Sam Johnston and Caitríona Doran, followed by an update on Ireland’s 2019 GDS Index results, an academic intervention from Dr Joanne Rourke from Dublin City Council on the Circular Economy and its potential in the MICE sector,…

The past months have come with an increase of opportunities for our team to do more work in the world. This is fantastic, as it evidences the growing interest in sustainability issues, and it also brings with it an increased workload. For this reason, the GDS-Index is looking for a new and committed sustainability champion to join our team of superheroes. This opportunity is for an experienced sustainability consultant, and will begin asap. Our team works remotely, and for this reason it is only…

December 6th 2019. At the Global Sustainable Tourism Council Conference, the Global Destination Sustainability Index (GDS-Index) and EarthCheck sign an alliance to develop and launch specialised certification and services for business tourism, event and meeting cities. The key goal of the alliance is to help cities, regions and countries to improve the environmental, social and economic performance of their visitor economy, and become more sustainable and healthy places to visit, meet in and live…

The wait and hard work everyone has put into this year's benchmarking has now born fruit: We are delighted to announce that the 2019 ranking has gone live. You can view this year's top 20 destinations by visiting the Top Destinations page. Aside of great leaps in performance for many destinations, the release of this year's results has brought with it a number of other occurrences worth mentioning: 1. For the first time in the history of the GDS-Index, the Most Improved Destination Award has been…

Understanding your social, economic and environmental impacts is no longer an option. Destinations need to measure the positive and negative footprint of their events and tourism sector, and set science-based targets to improve them.   The profound impact the tourism and events industry can have on a city, a region, and the entire world, is becoming more and more visible: be it the mountains of waste left behind after a festival; the carbon emissions of business tourism and flights; or overcrowded…