The Global Destination Sustainability (GDS) Movement has announced that Germany’s capital, Berlin, is scaling up its ambition to become one of the most innovative and sustainable meeting destinations in the world. Berlin will be participating in the Global Destination Sustainability Index (GDS-Index) to assess its performance and identify opportunities to increase their positive environmental and societal impact.
The GDS-Movement unites and enables destination management professionals to create resilient places to visit, meet and live in. By co-creating sustainable and circular strategies, mindsets and skill sets, it seeks to enable destinations of the future to thrive and support the achievement of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals.
Berlin already has a longstanding commitment to the sustainability agenda and is actively involved in advancing sustainability, circularity and climate-neutrality through a diversity of green initiatives in a multitude of industries. The business events sector is one of them.
In 2019, Visit Berlin launched Sustainable Meetings Berlin. Through this innovative initiative, Visit Berlin engages a network of partners and service providers in Berlin’s meetings industry. It has been developed in a multi-stakeholder process, resulting in the introduction of a sustainability management system with a demanding catalogue of criteria based on various international sustainability standards.
Visit Berlin will now participate in the GDS-Index to map, recognize and drive sustainable practices among its business tourism partner ecosystem. Ultimately, the goal will be to create a wide spectrum of increasingly sustainable offerings for their customers. By joining the GDS-Movement, the Berlin Convention Office of Visit Berlin will dedicate itself to:
- Benchmark the sustainability of Berlin, and its meeting and events industry through the GDS-Index
- Improve Visit Berlin’s sustainability strategy and supplier performance
- Increase awareness of, and integrate, the "17 Sustainable Development Goals" into the events and visitor economy
- Inspire clients to seek out and prize destinations with authentic event sustainability initiatives and regenerative models
- Share the knowledge gained and Berlin best practice examples with their clients, peers, and the whole business and leisure tourism sector
Visit about.visitberlin.de.
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