Section 10: Sustainability & impact
Sustainability
Sustainability
Sustainability is essential when considering the future of business events.
The carbon footprint of business events cannot be ignored and destinations, event organisers and their suppliers are starting to shift the way they approach, deliver and measure their events.
Providing your destination and venue/hotel’s sustainability credentials are becoming a more frequent ask from conference organisers and it is often expected that you include these within your bids and proposals.
Sustainability
Essentials
Building capacity should be your priority in the form of educating yourself and your internal teams and external stakeholders. There are many resources available for free via the VisitBritain Business Advice Hub or this events specific resource on net zero which you could share with your hotels, venues and suppliers.
Incorporating sustainability educational content into your existing member meetings or webinars is a simple way to educate and support your stakeholders via an existing platform without having to create something new.
Your clients will have expectations about sustainability so at the minimum, you need to have sustainability information available and to hand about your destination, venues and hotels.
Established
Understanding your current position, benchmarking against others and identifying your gaps is where you need to aim towards. You may have a small budget to work on sustainability (or you may decide to redirect existing budgets from elsewhere towards sustainability improvements) as you are prepared to invest in this for the good of your destination.
A great tool which enables you to benchmark against others and identify opportunities for further development is the Global Destination Sustainability Index.
Global Destination Sustainability Index (GDS-Index)
In 2024, 17 destinations in the UK participated in the GDS-Index, many led by their local Convention Bureau. It is a trusted performance improvement programme to assess and accelerate the progress of a destination’s regenerative journey. It measures, benchmarks, and enhances the sustainability strategies, action plans, and initiatives of more than 100 destination management organisations, municipal authorities, and their tourism supply chains across the world.
Identifying your destination’s strengths, gaps and opportunities enables you to establish your strategy for sustainability, the actions you are going to take, the resources needed to deliver and the costs of implementation. Remember that it’s a marathon, not a sprint and you can make small incremental improvements year on year to see transformation for good within your destination. Please visit gds.earth for more information.
Advanced
You already are aware of your destination’s current position and have identified areas for improvement, you probably already have (or are working on) a sustainability strategy for events — this may be part of a wider tourism or visitor economy strategy or destination management plan. You have clear actions set out to help you make improvements across your own operations as an LVEP; with your suppliers and also with your destination / city council’s environmental teams.
You will have already or are planning to employ a member of staff dedicated to sustainability who will look after your own organisation’s sustainability policy and strategy as well as the destination at large for business events.
You have a clear vision and the support and financial backing of your city council or regional authority. You are working towards your city / region’s environmental goals, for example, Net zero by 2030 and have signed the Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism (or made similar commitments).
Certifications
Purpose of certification
According to Greengage: Certification serves as a badge of credibility, signalling to customers, partners, and stakeholders that a business is committed to sustainable practices. This not only strengthens brand loyalty and enhances market positioning but also drives operational efficiencies through reduced resource consumption and waste.
Type of certification
You may consider certification for both your own organisation and / or your destination itself. When determining which of the many certification options are most suited to you and your destination it is important to do you research and consider the following:
The type of certification you decide to apply for will depend on your organisational set-up. You may be wholly publicly funded, wholly privately funded or a bit of both. You may be a Limited Company or similar legal entity.
The price of certification can vary enormously so you would need to look at what options best suit your needs and your budget. You may need to pay this annually to maintain your certification so consider it an investment and plan accordingly.
The resource required not only to gather the evidence and complete the paperwork, but also to implement any of the criteria required, for example, you may need to have a sustainability policy so you will need to factor in the resource /skill to create this. Potentially some of this could be outsourced but you would need to ensure a sufficient budget is available for this.
Here are some examples of certifications which may be appropriate for either your own organisation or for your venues / hotel. There are some hotel groups who have their own certifications however these are not third party certified so are arguably not as robust. Educating your partner businesses is a great way to start raising standards in sustainability for your destination:
- Green Tourism / Green Meetings
- Greengage
- GreenKey
- Green Destinations
- Earthcheck
- Biosphere
Communicating sustainability
Tell your story! If you are doing great work, it doesn’t matter where you are in your sustainability journey, there is always something to shout about. Whether it’s stories about your fantastic venues and hotels or your environmental teams or other initiatives, be sure to let your clients know about it.
Any communications or claims made about your destination or organisation’s sustainability need to be substantiated with data/evidence. The Green Claims Code from the UK government has been introduced to stop organisations making false claims or misleading statements about their sustainability. Further information on the rules and regulations can be found on the Green Claims Code website.
A series of sustainability guides produced by VisitBritain are available on the VisitBritain Learning and Development Hub including advice for your venues and checklists for event organisers.
Impact
The impact of business events is generally measured in economic terms — value of business, economic impact calculator and number of overnight visitors. Destinations and venues compete to host the most lucrative conferences and exhibitions that will drive high-spend delegates into hotels, venues, bars and restaurants. In fact, this is often the reason why convention centres and hotels are developed as part of city regeneration projects. Increased economic impact brings employment and investment opportunities into the local area so it is clear that this will always be an important measure for business events.
However, there is a global shift within the industry that suggests it is not sufficient to only measure the success of business events in economic terms. When people meet, great ideas and innovations can happen; fantastic collaborations and life-changing research can be shared and developed, and it is becoming increasingly important to understand the purpose of business events to a destination particularly in relation to association conferences and the incredible opportunities they have in supporting communities where they are held.
The VisitBritain BE Impactful Framework© is built upon #Meet4Impact’s BE Impactful Framework, incorporating insights and adaptations from stakeholder feedback. This framework emphasises the need to consult with prospective clients from the outset to embed mutually beneficial wider impact strategies, reporting more on areas that extend beyond the economic benefits. By aligning efforts with broader societal, sectoral and community objectives, the framework ensures that events contribute meaningfully to sustainable development and growth.
The VB BE Impactful Framework is structured around eight common capitals. The capitals framework allows events and destinations to articulate the full spectrum of benefits to clients and destination stakeholders, including environmental, social, economic, reputational and educational impacts.
The framework is organised by broad outcomes for each capital, which are supported by over 70 specific event indicators. These indicators can subsequently be reported at both the destination and national levels, ensuring a holistic understanding of an event’s impact.
Essentials
Understand your destination’s strengths and weaknesses and use these to develop your pipeline of potential conferences. If you are planning to start researching the types of conferences, you would like to attract to your destination then this should be the first place to start. What is your destination really good at? For example, cardiology, paediatric health. What does it need help with? For example, obesity crisis, diabetes, heart health. This gives your research a purpose — you can specifically look to target and attract the very events that can either help you spotlight and showcase your leadership OR that can offer the potential to help solve a serious issue your destination may have. Both options can easily lead to a positive impact.
Ensure that as a destination you are able to connect your event clients with locally based experts and networks who may help them to have a positive impact on your destination and communities. You could create a simple document that provides information on each provider, how they can help and gives the contact details so that they can then pick up the conversation directly. Your role is to guide and suggest:
- Schools.
- Public Health.
- Local Charities.
- Business Leader Groups.
- Chamber of Commerce.
- Universities.
- Centres of Excellence.
- Cultural Institutions.
- Foodbanks (or similar food initiatives).
- Donation programmes, for example, for homelessness.
- Environmental schemes, for example, beach clean.
Established
You are likely already using your sector strengths as a foundation to secure business and develop your pipeline. However, perhaps it is an opportunity to shift your focus to consider the fundamental challenges faced by your destination and identifying conferences that may be able to help tackle some of the issues your city or place is facing.
For example, your destination has one of the worst cases of child tooth decay in the country, your public health team will be putting together a plan to help tackle this. You research and identify a conference — International Paediatric Dentistry Conference for 1,000 delegates over four days. You have an ambassador who is a senior lecturer in your university dental school who is a member of this association. You bid for the conference and put impact at the heart of your bid, how attendees can help support your destination’s bid to reduce child tooth decay. A series of activities will take place before, during and after the conference and will be measured to demonstrate how successful it has been. Not only has the event had a big economic impact on the destination, it has also successfully educated XX children and parents on protecting teeth resulting in XX fewer cases of children needing tooth extractions.
Advanced
You will have created a programme or strategy which incorporates legacy and impact into your business events or you are ready to develop this. It’s part of your bidding strategy, research and pipeline development. You have an established network of key local contacts in place, and you facilitate meetings between clients and the local providers to develop ideas and implement them to create a positive impact. You may have created a new role in your organisation who’s responsible for delivering impact from business events or you may be looking to do this in the future. You now need to ensure that you have a plan in place to effectively measure the impacts beyond the economic and report on this to your stakeholders and clients.
The VisitBritain BE Impactful Framework© , created in partnership with #MEET4IMPACT, is available from the business event teams at VisitBritain and VisitEngland. Here are two examples of successful implementation:
- UK Alzheimer’s Research conference in Liverpool 2024 — Case Study
- International Congress of Infant Studies in Glasgow 2024 — Case Study