Calgary as a Sustainable Tourism Destination

To understand how well a city’s socio-economic and natural systems are functioning, destinations around the world utilize indicators to measure and report on sustainability stewardship. Global Destination Movement put forth an international benchmarking framework (GDS Index) to evaluate a destinations’ sustainability performance. Sustainability is measured across 77 indicators within four categories (social, environmental, supplier and destination management organization criteria), and is aligned with the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. Sustainability indicators are effective tools for igniting dialogue between stakeholders, driving change, setting targets, understanding emerging trends, creating new solutions and ideas, and can overall lead to effective policy, planning, and strategic management in the tourism sector. This project aims to utilize the GDS Index to measure Calgary’s performance as a sustainable tourism destination and overall explore strategies to improve its score. The goal of Calgary measuring and reporting within this framework is to encourage short- and long-term regenerative socio-economic prosperity throughout new market expansion in the sector.

Faculty Supervisor:

Irene Herremans

Student:

Partner:

Tourism Calgary

Discipline:

Earth science

Sector:

Public administration

University:

University of Calgary

Program: