When asked about your tourism and events’ sustainability efforts, do responses like this sound familiar?

What if we said you can swap these for:

?

Every destination needs clarity before acting, and GDS-Index Lite is a destination sustainability starting point designed to strengthen the foundation which can give rise to regeneration, the ultimate goal when it comes to responsible, responsive tourism and events.

Officially, its a performance improvement programme to accompany destinations in the initial* stage of their sustainability journey.

In everyday English, it’s a private, mini benchmark or self-assessment tool that can inform next steps, encourage change, and even lead to regeneration*, where tourism and events catalyse a flourishing destination that serves residents, visitors, and nature alike.

It gives cities and regions a simple, credible way to start right and act now. By limiting parameters (without compromising performance) it removes complexity, brings teams together, and turns early ambition into practical, confident steps you can take instantly and measurements you can use confidently.

To help you move from uncertainty to action, we empower your team to:

1. Understand your destination sustainability baseline quickly
2. Identify strengths and opportunities
3. Prioritise what to do next to further your performance and advance in your practice
4. Communicate more clearly and authoritatively with leadership, partners, and communities

This lets you build momentum, clarity, and confidence to move forward continuously, strategically, and manageably.

A Destination Management and Marketing Organisation (DMMO), City Convention Bureau (CVB), Municipality, Regional Tourism Organisation (RTO), or National Tourism Organisation (NTO) cannot improve what it is not measuring. A strong baseline allows a destination to align stakeholders, build commitments, and create a shared narrative around progress.

It informs formal documentation like destination sustainability strategy, visitor economy frameworks, and climate action plans.

The Lite model focuses on environmental impacts, governance, inclusion, social value, supply chains, water, waste, accessibility, and destination stewardship.

It supplies a toolbox of guides, templates, and video tutorials about data collection in the online management system, Omni.

It is guided by 20 criteria selected from the GDS-Index methodologys decade of hard data showing that these indicators drive destination sustainability performance improvement. There are also 10 additional, opt-in criteria to take if and when you’re ready.

Your destination sustainability starting point includes:

• A clear performance baseline
• A Performance Improvement Report (PIR) of tailored insights with data comparison and analysis, SWOT analysis, bespoke recommendations of priority actions suited to your context, and relevant best practices from other destinations
• A (private) score, using performance bands (gold, silver, bronze)
• Powered by Omni, the proprietary GDS-Index software platform
• Performance visualisations using a dashboard and “traffic light” indicator system
• A roadmap to the full GDS-Index
• A narrative that can be shared with supply chain, funders, partners, and clients

GDS-Index Lite brings structure and simplicity to complex sustainability questions. It equips teams to act now, build internal capability, and develop regenerative mindsets. It also supports long-term narratives that matter across the tourism ecosystem.

When a destination knows its starting point, it can choose its direction, set its pace, and design its future. With GDS-Index Lite, you can:

• Catalyse destination action
• Raise awareness of a destination’s key sustainability issues and opportunities
• Build internal capabilities and develop trust
• Identify gaps and define next steps
• Develop confidence and a greater ability to provide valid evidence
• Every journey requires a beginning. The destination sustainability starting point offered by GDS-Index Lite helps destinations start right, act now, and build the foundations for long-term regenerative change. With clarity comes confidence, and with confidence comes meaningful impact.

So, if your organisation wants to:

• Use a structured process with globally-recognised criteria to better understand sustainability performance of destination’s tourism and events sectors
• Improve strategy and drive performance by using gap analysis and recommendations
• Catalyse collaboration and innovation within the destination
• Build capacity and increase knowledge in the DMO/CVB and their stakeholders through knowledge and experience sharing with other participating destinations
• Communicate and promote destination’s unique sustainability story with credibility and accuracy to raise the profile and reputation

then, please talk to us about GDS-index Lite today.

*The journey to regeneration is unique to each city or region. GDS-Movement reserves the right to vet applicants at its discretion and limit the timeframe for advancing the full GDS-Index.