In an exciting partnership, we've joined forces with UN Tourism to embark on an innovative mission: crafting the very first environmental, social, and governance (ESG) framework tailored specifically for businesses in the tourism industry. 

Students form our Sustainable Tourism Programme have teamed up with UN Tourism to co-design a measurement tool that is meaningful and achievable for improved monitoring of how tourism businesses impact, and depend on, people, planet and prosperity, towards SDGs 16 and 17.

The need for businesses to have a positive impact is becoming increasingly important in all sectors. The challenge for tourism is not a lack of good work or data but the ability to report progress in a common way. This makes it difficult to assess performance across businesses and to communicate progress to customers who want to select more sustainable options.  

By creating a consistent internationally recognised framework this project aims to establish alignment in business disclosures, enabling more consistent and comparable reporting:
- Between businesses in the tourism sector 
- Between tourism businesses and other sectors

In phase one students have developed a set of key indicators for a draft ESG framework. During a month-long field lab, students travelled to multiple destinations to interview pioneering businesses in the accommodation sector to understand the practicalities of implementing the ESG framework. The findings from this research will support in refining the criteria in the next phases of this unique collaboration, and support industry-wide climate action (SDG 13).