Sustainability

Becoming a leading sustainable tourism destination

In line with Abu Dhabi’s vision to become a leading sustainable tourism destination, the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi (DCT Abu Dhabi) is implementing innovative new initiatives to promote sustainability within the tourism industry and enable partners to apply sustainable practices.

These include new sector-specific sustainability guidelines, a pledge towards net zero carbon for all events by 2050, a carbon calculator to estimate the carbon footprint of hotels Abu Dhabi, and a sustainability audit for all hotels in the emirate.

Sustainable Tourism Guidelines
The sustainable tourism guidelines were developed by DCT Abu Dhabi to raise awareness and enhance knowledge among its stakeholders, and encourage the implementation of sustainable practices across the different sectors in the tourism industry. The guidelines serve as a resource to support stakeholders in defining their sustainability roadmap and applying efficient and sustainable initiatives and solutions to their operations.

The sustainable tourism guidelines outline recommendations across key sustainability categories, encompassing culture and heritage, events, food and beverage, hotels, and leisure and entertainment attractions, as well as travel agents and tour operators. Based on the guidelines, the tourism industry in Abu Dhabi can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, mitigate the effects of climate change, and contribute to innovative solutions.

To find out more about DCT Abu Dhabi’s efforts towards a more sustainable tourism industry, click below to download the sustainability guidelines.

Download Sustainable Tourism Guidelines

Carbon Calculator
As the regulator of the emirate’s tourism industry, DCT Abu Dhabi has announced its carbon calculator initiative, which can be used to estimate and analyse the carbon footprint of Abu Dhabi’s hotels across various carbon emission sources, establish a feedback mechanism to reward the most sustainable hotels and support the ones that have room for improvement, and leverage the carbon footprint baseline to subsequently enable the subsequent setting of reduction targets.

Energy Walkthrough Audits for Hotels
Targeting an overall reduction of Abu Dhabi’s carbon footprint, DCT Abu Dhabi is facilitating energy audits for hotels in the emirate to identify which energy saving solutions have the best effect on the environment.

Accessible Events Manual

Accessibility is crucial to creating an inclusive community and ensuring that People of Determination enjoy the same privileges as other members of society. Accessibility in the events sector is essential for the destination to be inclusive to all types of visitors, resulting in an increase not only in visitor satisfaction ratings but also in visitor footfall numbers.

Ongoing efforts are being made to encourage inclusion of People of Determination and increase their engagement within the community to ensure equality for all. This has become a worldwide objective to be achieved through the Sustainable Development Goals agenda for 2030. Goal number 11 specifically focusses on making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable.

For the full Accessible Event Manual, click here

For the audio summary of the Accessible Event Manual, click here

Last Modified - 22/02/2024