Industry sustainability sits at the heart of the Tourism 2025 & Beyond framework and it is given effect through TIA’s New Zealand Tourism Sustainability Commitment He Kupu Taurangi Kia Toitū Ai Te Tāpoitanga (TSC). The TSC advances the overall industry sustainability performance by supporting individual tourism businesses to become more sustainable.

The TSC is a balanced scorecard approach – Economic, Visitor, Community and Environment, with 12 Commitments for operators to adopt into their business practices. The TSC utilises global best practice and applies United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals to the Aotearoa New Zealand tourism context. The TSC is a requirement of TIA membership.

Recently, TIA has been more directly working with partners to deliver more intense support to businesses to make sustainability a core part of their business strategy, utilising the TSC and its 12 Commitments as the framework. This has been part of TIA’s leadership in moving the TSC ‘from commitment to action’. An initial project with WellingtonNZ proved the effectiveness of this approach, and further projects are underway with Tourism Bay of Plenty and Destination Lake Taupo to take over 100 tourism businesses through the programme this year. TIA is currently considering options for further expanding this body of activity with the objective of supporting a critical mass of tourism businesses to become sustainable and regenerative operators.

TIA defines ‘Sustainability’ as being about ‘leaving our place better than we found it’ which sits well with the term ‘regenerative’. TIA views the two terms as complementary and equally valid.

Regenerative Tourism Centre
TIA is taking the lead to accelerate sustainability action across the tourism industry by proposing a Regenerative Tourism Centre to act as the central point for lifting the capacity of the industry and operators within it to build substantive sustainability action into their business systems. This initiative will drive deeper application of the TSC.