Sustainable Tourism Zone of the Caribbean

This user-friendly website has been created to support the Sustainable Tourism Zone of the Caribbean (STZC), enable self-evaluation for Destinations to join the STZC and provide general information to Destination Mangers, Caribbean Governments and the public at large.

The STZC evaluation process and the website fulfil the four core objectives of the project to establish a Sustainable Tourism Zone of the Caribbean:

• The development of a system that is simple and practical, and that can be applied and executed in ACS countries and destinations.
• The provision of a system that measures the level of Tourism Sustainability in the Destinations of ACS Member States and Associate Members, by using environmental, social, cultural and economic instruments or models.
• The creation of a system capable of shifting from simple to complex, as the case may be that has developed slowly and gradually, in the most homogenous manner possible among all countries of the region.
• The creation of a minimum set of indicators that are comprehensive, representative, comparable among destinations and quantitative.

The project has successfully created a fully functioning quantification system for assessing inclusion level into the STZC. The quantification system, based on a compound indicator of sustainable tourism (TSI) is robust and gives good discrimination between destinations.

The site provides participants in the STZC a convenient location for uploading and updating destination data for ‘Self Evaluation’. The collected data is stored in an online database and subsequently used to produce single index ratings for each destination that participated in Phase One and Phase Two of the overall project, this data will be available for amendments and updates.

The function of this website is also to make available the compiled information on the different phases of the project to ensure the optimal management of the tourist destinations.

The following forms for data input are available on the website:

• Destination Profile Form that allows each destination to fill in details about the specific destination, including uploading of map images.
• Destination Evaluation Form, broken up into smaller forms to make data entry more user friendly and less daunting.

These blank forms are available in a downloadable and printable PDF format for reference.

The following dynamically generated content is available from the website:

• A destination evaluation form for each destination, showing their up to date information
• Individual Gap analyses and action plan for each destination
• Destination index/rating value

In addition, the following static information will also be available:

• An indicative guide for the destination evaluation form
• An example completed Profile Form
• An example completed Destination Evaluation Form

An administrator role has been provided. The administrator has the ability to create and manage user accounts, audit and verify collected data. The administrator also has access to the ratings page which will show calculated results for each destination.

Each destination wishing to join the STZC is provided with a user account. With this account a destination can log in, view their destination data and update the information.

Users of the site will have the option of using the site in French, English and Spanish.