The Year in Review – A Recap of GDS-Movement and its Work in 2022
After a full year of radical collaboration, continuous improvement, and enthusiastic innovation, GDS-Movement is celebrating all stakeholders. See what we achieved together.
10 ViewsIt’s a wrap! 2022 is one of the best years yet for GDS-Movement in events, Index results, awards, and the Academy – and all of YOU play an important part in this journey.
After a full year of radical collaboration, continuous improvement, and enthusiastic innovation, we would like to sincerely thank all of the participating destinations, partners, individuals, and changemakers that made this possible. We have achieved so much together this year. Here are just a few highlights:
GDS-Index
Starting with the GDS-Index, we welcomed new cities from Helsingborg, Nice, Singapore, Vejle, Krakow, Milan, and Budapest this year.
We witnessed a stunning 33% increase in average performance in seven years across all destinations and a 44% increase in the Top 10 destinations. This data proves that GDS-Index participants are raising the bar to become regional, national, and international leaders in the journey towards better destination management.
Furthermore, 80% of the GDS-Index destinations now have a sustainable tourism strategy, up 47% since 2019. Collaboration with hotels, venues, agencies, visitors, event attendees, clients, key local government departments, and local community and citizens increased with 89 % of participating destinations engaging at least one of the stakeholders.
We are truly inspired by the top performers of the 2022 GDS-Index Award winners:
– 2022 GDS-Index Leadership Award winner: Gothenburg, Represented by Göteborg & Co. For the 6th year, Gothenburg earns the top spot with an impressive score of 92.98%. They consolidate their leadership with the best, overall performance in social, economic, and environmental index criteria.
– 2022 GDS-Index Most Improved Award winner: Bangkok, Represented by Thailand Convention & Exhibition Bureau (TCEB). The destination jumped into 28th place in 2022 showing that sustainability performance can be improved quickly with the right strategy, resources and partnerships.
– 2022 GDS-Index Innovation Award winner: Belfast, Represented by Visit Belfast. Belfast demonstrated the successful implementation of a sustainability strategy and showed how innovation in food can contribute to helping society. Their “Changing the Menu. For Good” initiative won the hearts and minds of the award’s judges.
In November we published the Raising the Bar GDS-Index report to showcase these and other brave and pioneering destinations that are collaborating and catalysing the regeneration of cities and towns, and actively working towards creating places that visitors, communities, and nature can flourish in. You can download the report through the link here.
GDS-Academy
It was an awesome year for the GDS-Academy. We ran two Certificate programs in Regenerative Destination Management; 4 Masterclasses in Impact Strategy and Management with our partners #Meet4Impact for Business Events Sydney; 20+ DMOs, Convention Centers and PCOs across the UK; 20+ DMOs across Canada and 17 DMOs in Sweden; a Storytelling and Communication Masterclass, 2 courses in Regenerative Event Management, and 22 workshops in Regenerative Destination Management in Malaysia, Korea, Panama, Hungary, Belgium, to name just a few.
GDS-Consulting
We are proud to see our consulting team working in partnership with destinations, corporations, governments and associations around the world.
On the destination front, we worked on Regenerative Destination strategies, communications and capacity-building projects for Edmonton, Belfast, Budapest, Catalunya, Quebec, Milano, RTO4 in Ontario, Denmark, Amsterdam, Goyang, Visit Rapids City and many more.
In the MICE industry, we continued our partnership with MCI working together to:
– Implement holistic sustainability and net zero strategies for the ESCRS association at their congress in Milan (Find out more here) and next year in Vienna.
– On the corporate side, we support SAP to develop a global sustainable events strategy and piloted it at the Flagship Sapphire event and their 2022 World tour in 9 countries.
– Develop the IC forum on Sustainable Development for the Swiss Federation
Happy holidays
It’s been an amazing year. Our thanks to our GDS-Index destinations, partners and clients, team members, and friends for being with us every step of the way.
We warmly invite you to continue to transform tourism and events for the better and stay with us in 2023. Happy holidays till then!
