The Sustainable Tourism Awards initiative has been selected by UNWTO to become part of the Affiliate Members Programme of Work 2024-2025.

This initiative for joint actions between Skål International and UNWTO in the context of promoting the Sustainable Tourism Awards has been presented by Past President Hulya Aslantas who is the representative of the organisation at the UNWTO Affiliate Members.

This opportunity helps to strengthen our relationship with UNWTO and fosters recognition of Skål International and its contribution to a more sustainable future.

The scope of the project focuses on:

• Increasing cooperation on Responsible Tourism between Skål International and UNWTO: We have been partnering with UNWTO for many years, to be exact, in 13 of the 22 editions held since the launch of the Skål International Sustainable Tourism Awards in 2002, having UNWTO as a jury member.

• Work together to achieve UNWTO’s mission to build a more responsible, sustainable and universally accessible tourism, focusing on:

• • UNWTO 2024-2025 Programmatic Priority 'Invest in People for a new Social Pact: reinforce education and training, strengthen human capital for decent work'.

  • UNWTO 2024-2025 Strategic Objective 'Become the most influential tourism organization: Deliver Value, Advocacy, Knowledge creation, Policy guidance & diversification of services'.

With the Skål International Sustainable Tourism Awards program, we are doing an important job by collecting sustainable projects from around the world and awarding them in different categories. 

Each project must be supported by a Skål International Club, except entries submitted by Government entities. The endorsement from the Skål International Clubs serves to confirm veracity of the initiatives presented on the entries, which are then evaluated by a jury made up by three independent judges, who are experts in the field of sustainability.

These projects are excellent best practices that can serve as examples to other institutions/companies/countries to help them learn and implement initiatives to achieve a more sustainable future.

"Needless to say, UNWTO has a wider audience and network that could help us to have these winning projects be heard and introduced. Among others, the joint work could be to get UNWTO’S support on the educational side, in their promotion such as posting them on your web site and media channels, as well as organising webinars with some of the winners", says Ms. Aslantas.