Abstract

Although environmental awareness continues to increase worldwide and the principles of sustainable tourism continue to influence changes in the tourism industry, the event sector has received little guidance in regulating its environmental impacts. This is despite the event sectors’s strong linkages to tourism and its potentially large negative impacts on the environment. Self-regulation through environmental accreditation schemes is being employed by tourism operators attempting to achieve more sustainable outcomes. Green Globe 21 is the only global environmental accreditation scheme for sustainable tourism. While Green Globe has developed benchmarking indicators applicable to twenty-five different tourism sectors, it has not devised an environmental benchmarking scheme applicable to special events. This paper utilises Green Globe’s most relevant environmental benchmarking scheme in applying each of its indicators to general characteristics of the event sector. Eight different indicators are applied to special events with a result of six indicators being suitable for events in their current state while two other indicators require adjustment, one minor and one major, in order to be applicable to the events. It is concluded that through these adjustments to Green Globe’s current benchmarking scheme, a suitable environmental accreditation scheme for the event sector can be established.