The 2024 GDS-Forum is taking place from 15 – 18 October 2024, is Bruges, Belgium.

The GDS-Forum is a gathering of destination leaders, sustainability advocates, and tourism experts, fostering innovation for regeneration. This year, the GDS-Forum is co-located the annual CityDNA Autumn Conference that takes place directly after it, offering attendees an enriching week with incredible networking opportunities.

The GDS-Forum programme is an evolving un-conference experience in the form of a flexible and informal meeting defined by deep cooperation. It aims to unlock attendees’ collective intelligence, share meaningful exchanges, solve shared challenges, and  empower participants to accelerate their destinations’ sustainable and regenerative tourism and events strategies through radical collaboration.

CityDNA, GDS-Movement, and Visit Bruges partner this year to present this exceptional in-person event, dedicated to nurturing cities’ environmental and socio-economic well-being.

Why should you attend the GDS-Forum?

As change accelerates beyond expectations in climate, cities, the workplace, artificial intelligence, and visitor numbers, the question arises: how do we shift from a state of concern to one of opportunity? How can we leverage the ongoing social and technological transformations to revitalise our cities, communities, and natural environments, ensuring greater resilience for the future? By collaborating to amplify our initiatives and innovations, we can drive exponential positive change.

Our Sustainability Approach

GDS-Movement, CityDNA and Visit Bruges Convention Bureau are committed to regenerative tourism, and will help destinations to strategise, scale positive impacts, and prioritise events with a positive social, environmental, and economic legacy.

The emissions from the local event production, delegate and team travel, accommodation, food and beverage, and multiple venues were measured. Where data was not available, impact data was estimated using the GDS-Movement database of sustainable events.

We used the TRACE platform to assess and track our CO2 emissions.

Find out more about the host city´s sustainability efforts here.

Offsetting Approach

In a world still transitioning to clean energy, some emissions are unavoidable, and we address these with high-quality carbon offsets in the form of carbon credits.