| dc.description.abstract | Small and Medium Enterprises have started becoming aware of the sustainability burdens produced by the increasing of the tourism industry worldwide. Nature-based destinations are vulnerable to overdeveloping consequences promoted by tourism. An approach for SMEs to contribute to sustainable development where their businesses are carried on is to certify their products and services with eco-labels. Eco-labels fundamental objective is to help consumers identify products and services which claims to meet specific criteria or standards. Nevertheless, due to a large number of eco-labels found in the market, there is an increasing need to develop relevant criteria to condense all of the options to track the most pertinent ones. Here, eight eco-labels for tourism products and services are selected to further on be analyzed and evaluated under five criteria: SDGs Coverage, Product and Service Relevancy, Resource Requirements, Communication Power, and Credibility. In order to show the eco-labels evaluation results, a scoring system was developed to ease the drawbacks and benefits understanding process. Results indicate that Miljøfyrtårn and the Green Key fulfill the majority of the criteria with high-level scores, so they are recommended to be adopted by SMEs in Geiranger.
Likewise, the scoring system is intended to serve as a guidance tool for further research to analyze and compare eco-labels for determined regions. Furthermore, although none of the eco-labels scored high in all of the criteria, aspects of improvement were noticed and are recommended for more sustainable practices. There are also opportunities for eco-labels to become more widely and successfully used within SMEs in nature-based destinations by using a scoring system methodology to measure their performance. | |
