The Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC), and digital travel platform Agoda organized a hotel sustainability training for industry professionals on 22-23 September at The Westin Seoul Parnas, located in Gangnam, South Korea. The program brought together local hoteliers for a series of sessions led by industry experts, aiming to provide them with the competencies and tools necessary to enhance their sustainability practices.
Jay Lee, Senior Country Director South Korea at Agoda, said, “Agoda is honored to work together with the GSTC to deliver our inaugural in-person sustainability training focused on the hospitality sector in South Korea. This initiative, a modest yet important step, aligns with our collective vision to promote more sustainable tourism. With the right knowledge and tools, we aim to accelerate this evolution.”
Using the GSTC Hotel Standard as a checklist, participants were empowered to assess their current performance and then set achievable short-, medium-, and long-term sustainability goals.
Dr. Mihee Kang, Chief Assurance Officer at GSTC, shared, “This training underscored the importance of building knowledge and skills to advance sustainable tourism. The active participation of Korean tourism industry professionals reflects a shared commitment to embedding responsible practices into the tourism sector and supporting the continued growth of a more sustainable tourism industry in South Korea.”
Dr. You Hyun Jang, Director of the International Cooperation Unit at the Korea Tourism Organization, delivered a guest speech at the event. He shared, “This GSTC training creates a meaningful forum to share challenges and explore solutions for sustainable tourism development in response to the climate crisis. It provides the hotel and travel agency sectors with the opportunity not only to examine carbon emissions and countermeasures, but also to analyze the deeper structural issues behind them from a phenomenological perspective, serving as both a space for reflection and a foundation for practical action.”
To date, over five hundred industry professionals have taken part in the in-person hotel sustainability trainings organized by GSTC and Agoda as part of the Sustainable Tourism Academy initiative across eight markets, including India, Singapore, and Thailand. More than forty participants, including senior executives from global and local hotel brands like Ascott, Hilton, Hyatt, Lahan, Lotte, and Westin, attended the inaugural edition in Seoul.
