A new guide for Spanish tourism suppliers, produced byTurEspaña and the Travel Foundation aims to support small businesses to gather and use the information required by new Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) reporting regimes.
New ESG reporting regimes in both the EU and UK as well as globally, will promote clear, transparent reporting on impact by travel and tourism companies. This also presents a golden opportunity for closer industry and destination-level collaboration to support the tourism value chain to make progress on the big challenges we all face, such as tackling climate change, equity and fair distribution of tourism benefits.
However, whilst the new reporting requirements will directly affect larger operators, the complexity of the evolving landscape will place additional pressure on, and create new requirements from, the tourism supply chain. This is largely comprised of small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs), who often need more knowledge, skills, resources and technology to comply with these demands. Without industry alignment and support, suppliers may find themselves confused and feel overwhelmed.
Recognising these challenges, The Travel Foundation and TurEspana launched a report at WTM London, designed to support suppliers to understand the data and information they need to start collecting. These include topics such as energy and carbon, waste, pollution, water management, biodiversity impacts, workers in the supply chain and community impacts. The report also highlights the ways in which smaller tourism suppliers can use the data themselves to assess their own sustainability performance and drive improvements by streamlining their operations, increasing efficiency and reducing costs; building resilience for future challenges; enhancing and products and services; responding to customer, investor, and community expectations; engaging and retaining staff; encouraging sustainable choices by customers and creating a clear framework to take action and track progress on sustainability within their own business.