Unlike anything humanity has experienced before, the current scale, scope, and complexity of changes are shaking the foundations that society has accepted as the norm.
Five converging megaforces present destinations with both tremendous opportunities to adapt to the risks brought by: Climate Breakdown, Ecocide, Demographic Shift, Social Change and Digitalization.
To navigate these forces the GDS-Index has created a collaborative benchmarking platform, to measure and improve the sustainability strategy and performance of meetings, events and business tourism destinations.
Mélanie Delaplanche, Director of the GDS-Index notes: “I am thrilled to see the level of performance improve year on year, this is an extremely good sign that destinations are tackling the sustainability challenges of our industry and that the GDS-Index drives and delivers measurable results. With more than 50 destinations benchmarked in 2018, the Index is definitely gaining momentum. More US destinations are joining the rankings, such as Washington DC and Monterey County, we are also delighted to welcome more destinations from very different places of the globe: Bangkok, Dubai, St Petersburg but also more European cities: Monaco, Ljubljana. Ireland is showing a strong commitment to sustainability, with Limerick, Cork, Galway and Kerry now on the Index. Thanks to all destinations for their continued and meaningful efforts in driving sustainability”.
Performance of destinations in the GDS-Index saw an increase of 9% since the programme started in 2016. Convention Bureau (CVB) performance leapt 39% since 2016, which demonstrates how the GDS-Index is deliver on its purpose and helping destinations to match their initial commitments with progressive action. With increasingly robust climate and green growth strategies, the environmental performance score increased by 4% since 2016. Social performance decreased by 11% in 2018, but by 25% since 2016. This is mainly due to the change of social criteria in 2017.
There are three levels for destinations to participate in the GDS-Index. 47% of the destinations participated in 2018 at a Basic level, 45% at Advanced and 8% at Premium. In terms of performance Advanced destinations out-perform Basic ones by 24%, as would be expected with the increased commitment and involvement from the GDS- Index team to improve strategy. In addition, 85% of the Top-10 destinations are in the advanced category. Premium destinations are currently under performing advanced destinations by 8%. This is due to these four cities being new to the GDS-Index. With their focus on strategy development, it is expected that their performance will increase significantly in the 2019 benchmarking.
Please use the filters below, to rank destinations using different metrics. This will also allow you to see which scores destinations received in different categories (if you filter by category).
To view more detailed reports on each individual destination, you can click on the destination of your choice.
