How does Swiss Travel guarantee the continuity of its System for Touristic Sustainability Management in its daily operation?

Swiss Travel’s Touristic Sustainability Management System is a cyclic process of planning, implementation, revision, and improvement of the Organization’s processes to guarantee the achievement of the Company’s strategic goals.

This cyclic process is brought into every action and every project at Swiss Travel, and it is based on the model of “Plan, Do, Check, Act” (PDCA). It starts with a planning phase, in which our current situation is studied in order to identify possible negative impacts generated by our activities and aspects of the Quality and Service Management area that present opportunities for improvement. These are analyzed to determine their causes and create an action plan that will allow us to offset any negative impact.

The implementation stage, or the Doing part, corresponds with the execution of the projects planned within the improvement scheme. At this stage, the Corporation’s personnel is given training regarding each of the projects, and the necessary adjustments are made for their correct functioning.

Once the project has been launched, it needs to be revised to analyze if it is delivering the expected results. At this step, one of verification, the project’s operation is monitored, which would allow for the detection and correction of any incongruity, thus ensuring that the desired improvement is being produced.

Finally, the acting phase refers to the official establishment of the obtained improvement as a common practice at Swiss Travel; this is, creating the operation manuals, procedures, instruction books, and all pertinent documentation, which will ensure the continuous implementation of the projects, with instructions and specific responsibilities assigned to every party involved.

The Touristic Sustainability Management System is maintained and followed-up through environmental and quality indicators, internal and external audits, which are supported by the Corporations’ documentation center (known internally as SFD), thus ensuring the correct application and effectiveness of the programs, and the benefits that they may bring to sustainable tourism.