ICCA Scandinavia in partnership with MCI and VisitAarhus has launched the 2013 Scandinavia Destinations Sustainability Index. For the last four years they have been working to bring together the meetings industry of Norway, Iceland, Finland, Norway and Denmark to collaborate and create the world’s first ever sustainable meetings region.
As part of the project, MCI Sustainability Services researched and benchmarked the social and environmental sustainability performance of 22 cities across the five nations. This, the second Scandinavia Destinations Sustainability Index demonstrates how the Cities, their Tourism Authorities, Convention Bureaux, and members are sharing best practice and working together to drive change. In the last year the project improved sustainability performance across the region by 11% in the meetings industry category. Strategy improvement has been the key improvement across the region; in just one year Cities with a Sustainable Meeting Strategy increased from 25% to 47%. Over 59% of all venues and hotels across the region are now eco-certified.
The project was designed to foster collaboration, the sharing of best practices and to start to get cities reporting. It does not yet use the GRI Framework, but it uses some indicators and will evolve to use G4 and encourage full reporting across the region.
The project was sponsored by MCI and VisitAarhus. The Index will be expanded to include other regions and cities in 2014.