Request for Proposal: Tourism Verification/Certification Business Plan

The Rainforest Alliance (RA) is an international nonprofit organization that works to conserve biodiversity and ensure sustainable livelihoods by transforming land-use practices, business practices and consumer behavior. Based in New York City, with offices throughout the United States and worldwide, the Rainforest Alliance works with people whose livelihoods depend on the land, helping them transform the way they grow food, harvest wood and host travelers.

Rainforest Alliance achieves its mission, in part, by developing and implementing voluntary sustainability standards systems. We have 25 years of experience developing such programs, including the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) program, for which we are the largest certifier, and the Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN)-Rainforest Alliance system, the first comprehensive sustainable agriculture standard system in the world. These programs have been powerful agents for positive change in the forestry and agriculture sectors, transforming land-use practices on over 65 million hectares of land in over 70 countries worldwide. Importantly, forest and farm managers have realized sufficient benefits from participating in the FSC and SAN systems that they are willing to pay the full costs of being audited and certified to the relevant standards. This willingness to pay enables the programs to be self-sufficient financially, and therefore sustainable as a voluntary, unsubsidized private sector initiative.

In recent years, we have developed a substantial program in sustainable tourism, with the objective of helping to build a responsible tourism industry that is committed to protecting the environment, improving the well-being of local cultures and helping the people who live in and near biodiversity-rich destinations to derive economic benefits from the tourists they host. As a founding member of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC), we are fostering sustainable tourism through the adoption of universal sustainable tourism principles -- compiling, adapting and creating tools and training to engage in sustainable tourism practices and increasing the demand for sustainable tourism products and services.

As part of our initiatives in sustainable tourism, we have developed and piloted a sustainable tourism verification program. Based on principles and criteria that cover all aspects of hotel or tour operation, the program aims to advance the sustainability performance of tourism operations, with a particular focus on small and medium enterprises (SMEs) located close to biodiversity-rich destinations with high conservation value. Since 2003, Rainforest Alliance has been providing diagnostic and later verification services to SMEs in Latin America under a grant subsidized scheme. More than 700 verification assessments have been performed under this program. As this funding nears the end of its cycle, we are preparing to transition the sustainable tourism verification program toward a viable long-term model in which the clients (hotels, tour operators) fully cover the costs of auditing and verifying compliance to the program’s standards.