ESG Framework for Tourism Businesses
Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) considerations are now essential for corporations globally, encompassing key non-financial factors such as greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity, employee well-being, community impact, gender equality, shareholder rights, and corporate transparency.
In the tourism sector, where businesses are deeply connected to the environment and local communities, ESG plays a critical role. It affects everything from customer loyalty and biodiversity protection to risk management, sustainable financing, and investor relations. However, existing ESG frameworks often lack standardisation, making it difficult to compare and scale efforts across the industry.
The ESG Framework for Tourism Businesses project addresses this gap, by aiming to harmonise how tourism businesses measure and report their ESG impacts and ultimately fostering a more sustainable future.
Led by UN Tourism, in collaboration with the Oxford SDG Impact Lab and sponsored by easyJet holidays, this Framework is developed with extensive input from industry leaders.
CONTEXT
The tourism sector is deeply intertwined with both the environment and local communities, making it highly vulnerable to global stresses such as climate change and biodiversity loss. While tourism can drive economic growth and help preserve natural, cultural, and heritage sites, it can also contribute to environmental degradation and social disruption. Destinations that fail to manage resources effectively—such as polluted beaches or overcrowded city centres—risk losing their competitive edge in the global tourism market. This duality underscores the need for sustainable tourism.
Sustainable tourism has been an emerging topic in tourism circles since the early 1990s. UN Tourism´s long-standing commitment to sustainable tourism is reflected in its contributions to policy and measurement. With a focus on sustainable destinations, UN Tourism noted that sustainable tourism should:
(i) Make optimal use of environmental resources and conserve natural resources and biodiversity.
(ii) Respect the socio-cultural authenticity of host communities.
(iii) Ensure viable, long-term economic operations, including stable employment and contributions to reducing poverty.
To promote measurable sustainability actions, UN Tourism launched the Statistical Framework for Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism (SF-MST), which supports evidence-based decision-making by integrating data on tourism’s economic, environmental, and social impacts across multiple scales and dimensions. SF-MST primarily focuses on the public sector, aligning tourism sustainability metrics with national statistics.
Building on the SF-MST, the ESG Framework for Tourism Businesses responds to the industry's demand for standardised ESG reporting. By extending its applicability to the private sector, this framework enhances comparability across destinations, national and subnational levels, offering a unified approach to sustainability.
Despite several ESG initiatives, their independent development has led to fragmented reporting standards, limiting comparability and scalability. The inconsistency also raises concerns about "greenwashing”, where companies provide insufficient data to give investors and the public an accurate view of their sustainability performance.
The ESG Framework for Tourism Businesses addresses this gap by offering a tailored, sector-specific approach to ESG issues. The framework will serve as a key reference point for tourism companies to actively engage with sustainability-related issues and meet growing regulatory and market demands in the face of global challenges.
Information about the selection of businesses and findings on the implementation of the ESG framework for tourism businesses will be published in this website.
