Background

Destination Canada co-invested in a program for Destination Marketing Organizations (DMO) across the country to partake in the Global Destination Sustainability Index (GDS-Index). The annual process is the world's leading sustainability performance program for business tourism destinations around the world. The index measures destination health over four surveys - Environment, Social, Supplier, and Destination - and is aligned to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

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2023 was the first year that Tourism Calgary, took part in the program. Over an assessment covering 66 questions, Calgary received a score of 45.2 which was considered solid, but needing improvement. This would prove to be a challenging task as the GDS-Index 2024 reflected a substantial change to questions over the four surveys and an increase from 66 questions to 77 altering both the data collection and the scoring system.

 

Result

From March through June 2024, broader engagement with City of Calgary, SAIT, and several tourism venues and attractions was initiated earlier in the process to gain a "Team Calgary" approach to data collection and representation of answers for the 77 questions. Furthermore, Tourism Calgary entered into an internship arrangement with a student from the University of Calgary pursuing her Masters of Science in Sustainable Energy. The GDS-Index would act as a capstone research project not only anchoring data responses submitted in best practice, but providing academic insights into areas of improvement for future years. ​

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In 2024, Calgary received a score of 52 which when corrected for the scoring adjustments in the program, represented an increase of 15% over 2023 results.

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https://www.gds.earth/destination/Calgary/2024/