Destination Greater Victoria (DGV) has won an international award for global impact on sustainable tourism.
The award is for the significant contributions DGV has made to the travel and tourism industry over the past four years.
The DGV was noticed for the award through its co-founding, financial investment and organizational commitment of the annual IMPACT Sustainability Travel and Tourism Conference (IMPACT) in Victoria.
“Our sector’s impressive recovery from the pandemic demonstrates that sustainability and commercial success can be achieved concurrently” says CEO of Destination Greater Victoria, Paul Nursey. “I want to congratulate our entire DGV team, the municipalities and member businesses that support us, and our IMPACT conference partners for this important recognition.”
A crucial part of the award criteria is that the target organization must identify, implement and contribute solutions to local challenges and opportunities that can be sizeable to other destinations from a global standpoint. DGV and IMPACT went well above the criteria, and is being licensed around the world through the IMPACT Sustainability Travel & Tourism Event Series: Local, Regional, and National.
Sustainability was only starting to emerge as an important topic in North America when DGV decided to align its business strategy to it. Apart of that strategic choice was creating IMPACT in 2018 with the vision of making sustainability actionable, realistic, and tangible. Today, the conference attracts approximately 300 delegates from around the world which includes private business operators, government officials, and Indigenous tourism leaders just to name a few.
IMPACT has also been producing an annual conference proceedings paper that has influenced dozens of destination organizations’ strategies directly and indirectly. Locally, the conference also generates over $600,000 to the visitor economy in the depths of the off-peak season.
“The world of destination marketing and management is completely differently then it was just a few years ago,” says Don Welsh, CEO of award presenters Destinations International. “Tourism leaders worldwide are facing an ever-changing landscape of destination issues, which is challenging us to re-imagine the work we do. Paul Nursey and his team began that process years ago by closely aligning their goals and operations with the values of the communities they serve. They’ve been incredibly successful, and through IMPACT, they continue to generously share their insights and foster collaboration among our members so we can learn from each other and redefine best practices in destination management.”
The award will be presented to DGV at Destinations International annual convention in Dallas, Texas during the opening session on July 18.
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