Recently, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) officially released the international standard “Sustainable tourism — Indicators for tourism value chain organizations — Requirements and guidelines for use” (ISO 18060:2026) (hereinafter referred to as “the Guide”). Under the coordination of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, this standard was jointly proposed by China and Brazil and officially launched in 2022. It took over three years to develop and finalize. This is reported to be the first international standard in the tourism sector jointly promoted by BRICS countries under the BRICS cooperation framework.
The Guide provides all types of organizations with a unified indicator system and implementation methodology for measuring sustainable development performance. It is applicable to tourism enterprises, destination management organizations, and related service providers that seek to improve operational quality and social responsibility by implementing the concept of sustainable development. From the environmental, social, and economic dimensions, it establishes a set of measurable, comparable, and actionable general indicator framework, aiming to enhance the sustainability performance of various organizations, contribute to destination protection, meet the growing demand for “responsible tourism” practices, and facilitate the transformation of sustainable management from “what has been done” to “what has been achieved.”
The text of the Guide consists of an introduction and seven chapters of technical content, which mainly cover the methodology for constructing sustainable tourism indicators. Examples include indicators related to the environmental, social, and economic dimensions. At the application level, the Guide provides guidance on calculation formulas, counting rules, and data sources.
