Africa Travel Week
Responsible Tourism Awards

CATCH-UP: What role for certification?

The Global Sustainable Tourism Council was established to ensure a consistent baseline across the wide variety of schemes that emerged to empower travellers and holidaymakers to make more informed choices and drive sustainable tourism development. Reflecting on the last two decades, what have we learnt about what works and why? How can we increase the effectiveness of certification in delivering sustainable tourism?

THE SPEAKERS

Lee-Anne Bac
Director: BDO South Africa Advisory

Lee-Anne has more than 20 years’ experience in providing consulting and advisory services to public and private sector clients in the property, tourism and hospitality sectors. Lee-Anne carries out assignments that include strategic planning, market and financial feasibility assessments, financial evaluations, business valuations, economic impact assessments, market research, demand assessments and monitoring & evaluation. She is a member of the Gauteng Committee of the Woman’s Property Network.

Olivia Ruggles-Brise
Director, Greenview

Olivia has over 15 years’ experience in the travel and hospitality sector in sustainability, strategy, communications and consultancy. She joins Greenview from the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) where she led the organisation’s strategy, research and sustainability initiatives for nearly ten years. She oversaw WTTC’s involvement in the development of the Hotel Carbon Measurement Initiative (HCMI) and led industry task forces on ESG reporting, climate action, illegal wildlife trade and human trafficking. Olivia was also responsible for the programme for WTTC’s annual Global Summit and regional events, the annual Tourism for Tomorrow awards programme, and setting the organisation’s strategy based on industry trends and insights.

Andrea Nicholas
CEO Green Business UK Ltd

Co-founder of the Green Tourism Certification Programme during the past 24 years Andrea has assisted in development of green networks and certification programmes throughout the UK and in Europe, New Zealand, Sweden, Canada and Africa. The Green Tourism Programme started in 1997 and has expanded to cover all of the UK & Ireland with over 2500 members. In the past 2 years Andrea has driven the development of a digital platform for Sustainable Management, GreenCheck, which is being used for Green Tourism and adapted for other industries such as the health and transport sectors.

Kelly Bricker
Professor and Director of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism at the University of Utah

Kelly Bricker is a Professor and Director of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism at the University of Utah, located in the College of Health. She completed her Ph.D. research with the Pennsylvania State University, where she specialized in sustainable tourism and protected area management. She has research and teaching interests in ecotourism, sense of place, community development, visitor management, value of nature-based experiences, and the impacts of tourism. She has authored and edited books on sustainability, which highlight case studies in tourism meeting environmental and societal issues.

THE MODERATOR

Harold Goodwin
Responsible Tourism Advisor, World Travel Market

Harold puts together the flagship Responsible Tourism programme at WTM London which attracted 4000 participants in 2020 and the programmes run at WTM Africa, WTM Latin America and Arabian Travel Market. Harold has worked on 4 continents with local communities, their governments and the inbound and outbound tourism industry. He is Managing Director of the Responsible Tourism Partnership and chairs the panels of judges for the World Responsible Tourism Awards and the other Awards in the family, Africa, India and Latin America.

Africa Travel Week

Africa Travel Week (ATW) focuses on inbound and outbound markets for general leisure tourism, luxury travel, LGBTQ+ travel and the MICE/business travel sector as well as travel technology. Shows include: ILTM Africa, WTM Africa, EQUAL Africa, ibtm AFRICA, Travel Forward, Sports & Events Tourism Exchange and African Tourism Investment Summit.