Our jour­ney

Trans­for­ma­tion & Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion

In the future, sus­tain­abil­i­ty cer­ti­fi­ca­tions will focus more on deliv­er­ing mea­sur­able results — in oth­er words, hav­ing a real impact and con­tin­u­ous­ly improv­ing. At Odona­ta, we want to make these cer­ti­fi­ca­tions smarter and more sys­temic so that they become a dri­ver for more sus­tain­able tourism.

Cer­ti­fi­ca­tions that real­ly make a dif­fer­ence

Our goal is to take sus­tain­abil­i­ty cer­ti­fi­ca­tions to the next lev­el by mov­ing away from com­plex, bureau­crat­ic process­es and towards dig­i­tal solu­tions that are easy to scale. This gives busi­ness­es and des­ti­na­tions prac­ti­cal tools to bet­ter man­age and cred­i­bly demon­strate their sus­tain­abil­i­ty per­for­mance.

The chal­lenge: too many labels, too lit­tle impact

The wide vari­ety of cer­ti­fi­ca­tions often makes it dif­fi­cult for the tourism indus­try — and for guests — to keep track. Not every label is equal­ly trust­wor­thy, and some pro­grams com­bine con­sult­ing, audit­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion with­in a sin­gle orga­ni­za­tion, which can lead to con­flicts of inter­est.

SMEs and com­plex sup­ply chains need clear stan­dards

Tourism often con­sists of small and medi­um-sized com­pa­nies with com­plex sup­ply chains. It is par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult for them to find suit­able and effec­tive cer­tifi­cates. Although more and more com­pa­nies and des­ti­na­tions are cer­ti­fied, the labels are often still too lit­tle known and rec­og­nized by cus­tomers and in the indus­try. How­ev­er, the demand for reli­able, cred­i­ble sus­tain­abil­i­ty cer­ti­fi­ca­tions is con­stant­ly increas­ing — because more and more trav­el­ers are specif­i­cal­ly look­ing for envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly and social­ly respon­si­ble offers.

Our path to real impact

We are com­mit­ted to ensur­ing that sus­tain­abil­i­ty cer­ti­fi­ca­tions cre­ate real impact and dri­ve mean­ing­ful change. With the Tourism Impact Alliance project, co-financed by SECO, we laid the foun­da­tion for this mis­sion. The Audit Office grew out of this work — and today, with Odona­ta Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Ser­vices GmbH, we are mov­ing for­ward with a new, for­ward-think­ing approach.