What the GSTC is
The Global Sustainable Tourism Council manages the GSTC Standards — formerly and still widely called the GSTC Criteria — which are the global baseline standards for sustainable travel and tourism. They underpin certification for hotels and accommodations, for tour operators and transport providers, and for destinations.
The GSTC's own description of its role is unusually direct, and worth reading before you do anything else:
“GSTC does not conduct certification — that is the job of Certification Bodies throughout the world; GSTC's job is to accredit those that certify.”Official source · Global Sustainable Tourism CouncilGSTC on certification, accreditation and recognitionOpen official guidance
So what does “GSTC” on a hotel's website mean?
Not that the GSTC assessed the hotel. A hotel is certified by a certification body, and it is that body's relationship with the GSTC that connects the certificate back to the global standards — either recognition of the standard the body assesses against, or accreditation of the body itself. Those are different things with different meanings, and the GSTC publishes which bodies and standards hold which status.
The practical consequence for a UK hotel: you do not apply to the GSTC. You choose a certification scheme, and the question worth asking about that scheme is what relationship it has with the GSTC — which is a matter of public record on the GSTC site rather than something to take from the scheme's own marketing, or from ours.
What our diagnostic assesses against GSTC themes
Our question bank tags each question with the frameworks its subject matter evidences. GSTC themes are the broadest tag in the bank, which is what you would expect from a baseline standard the others are built around:
From our question bank · v2026.3
33 of the 45 questions in our current diagnostic are tagged to the GSTC Hotel Standard, spanning 8 of our 8 impact areas.
- Governance & policy5/5
- Energy5/6
- Carbon & emissions3/3
- Water5/7
- Waste & circularity1/9
- Procurement & supply chain6/6
- People, guests & community4/4
- Biodiversity & community4/5
This mapping is our own editorial judgement about which parts of a hotel's operation each question evidences. It is not produced, reviewed or endorsed by the scheme, and it is not a claim that answering these questions meets any particular published criterion. The scheme's own criteria are the only authoritative source.
Read that as a map of where the questions sit, not as a conformity score. Whether a given practice satisfies a given criterion is a judgement for a certification body assessing against a published standard — which is precisely the thing the GSTC exists to make sure is done by someone competent and independent.
What this guide is not
It is not a copy of the GSTC Standards, an interpretation of any criterion, or an assessment of conformity to them. We are not affiliated with the GSTC, not accredited by it, and not a certification body of any kind. We do not reproduce the criteria here because they are the GSTC's to publish and they are revised — read them at the source.
What we do is the preparation: a free baseline, the gaps ranked by what to fix first, and evidence organised so that when an accredited assessor does arrive, there is nothing left to find.