Inconvenientes en la operación

The electronic consultation was two folded. First, to monitor and participate in the e- conferences on ecotourism certification hosted by Planeta.com, and keep records of messages sent in order to introduce those opinions in the consultation. Second, as a backup to postal consultation for questionnaires and the review of the first draft of proposals.

Expert interviews

Expert interviews were used throughout the project, in the initial phases to set the parameters of the task and in the later stages to test the feasibility of specific proposals. Expert interviews were particularly used to consult accreditation bodies in the changes that accreditation is undergoing in other sectors beyond the published information available for benchmarking.

Advisory Committees

The two Advisory Committees have been involved throughout the project in formal and informal support, ranging from providing contacts, reviewing chapters of the main report, and providing copious recommendations. Nineteen of the thirty nine members of the Advisory Committees met during the International Year of Ecotourism Summit at Quebec in May 2002 to review the first draft report, which provided clear direction to the rewriting of the document and considering alternatives to the proposals developed at the time. The team developing the proposals responded to the 30 pages of recommendations provided by the Advisory Committees.

2.2.2. Market demand

The methodology used in the preparation of this report is qualitative. Quantification of the responses was not considered appropriate when the audiences had a significantly different knowledge of the topics raised and also when a large part of the discussion was around the meanings of issues rather than the number of organizations willing to support one specific statement. The results of discussions on willingness to pay and market demand reinforced the suitability of this methodology. Participants to most workshops were not willing to forecast a specific market demand for a service that was not clear. Most predictions were of low market demand due to the lack of knowledge on what a STSC could achieve or stated market demand conditional to a variety of actions by other stakeholders or a specific nature of the STSC. For these reasons the comments gathered were used to propose that for an optimum market demand the STSC should be organized in those ways that the consultation proposed, and it is only after producing more specific proposals and probably after a test phase that market demand will become clearer, at which stage it might be reasonable to attempt quantifying this demand. See section 4.5 for results.

2.2.3.Benchmark studies: organizational structure, governance, and

finances

The methodology for this section is qualitative. The data for this section came from interviews and written questionnaires via email, as well as from annual reports, organizational literature, and Web sites. In all, fifteen organizations were included in the analysis, and several other experts were surveyed. See Chapter 5 for results.

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2.2.4. Dissemination by audiences

The dissemination strategy used three tools: broad press releases to generate interest and reach broader audiences, industry updates sent to all members of the STSC database, and academic publications to address more in depth some of the key issues raised in the consultative process. The outline of which tools were used for each stakeholder group follows.

Press and Publications

Two press releases were sent to both specialized ecotourism and sustainable tourism press and electronic distribution lists to present the project with the aim of generating further interest for consultation workshops. This was successfully achieved, and usage of the press has been a second priority in managing consultation workshops.

Articles about the STSC and references in several publications were published during the development of this project (see Appendix 5).

Industry

Industry was targeted through workshops and postal and electronic communications. It was expected that a limited proportion of the industry would participate, for two reasons. Firstly, because of focusing on other priorities such as the effects of the September 11th, 2000 terrorist attacks on the tourism industry. Secondly, because certification bodies have not been keen on the idea of STSC contacting their members directly, as some considered this approach could be competition for their current certification programs and felt uneasy about it. Industry consultation took place by contacting industry associations through workshops, questionnaire and expert interviews. The project resources did not allow for in-depth consultation to this group, and data could be biased towards those industry members that have shown an interest in the subject.

Academia

The project team has used the traditional electronic distribution lists to contact academia, from which a variety of contacts and questions arisen.

The publication in academic circles was used as a method to address some of the key challenges of the STSC, and to justify the choices made in the process. The main question asked in the first contacts with academia was whether setting global standards would mean that large corporations from developed countries would have the means to keep the paper trails and to pay for consultancy fees, whereas smaller, community based operations would be left out of the market. To answer how the project team has addressed this point, an academic refereed journal article was written outlining the potential pitfalls of accreditation from a social exclusion point of view, and how the methodology of this project takes these issues into account and tries to deal with them (see Font & Sallows, 2002). Further academic papers were published on the feasibility of ecotourism certification (see Sallows & Font, 2003), the need for government intervention in supporting small firms access to certification (see Maccarrone-Eaglen & Font, 2002), and the rationale behind the STSC study (see Sanabria, 2002, in Honey, 2002). See Appendix 4 for a list of these and other papers. By the conclusion of this project, Stanford University (USA) was also finishing a case study on the STSC for academic purposes.

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