Eco Certification In Queensland'S Wet Tropics World Heritage Area: Is It Good For Business?

Certification is heralded as one of the most effective measures for advancing the sustainable tourism agenda. Yet, if it is to do so, it must encourage tourism operators to alter their behaviour. When assessing the success of a certification scheme, it is, therefore, essential to look at the degree to which the scheme engages those who would otherwise be uninterested — hypothesised here to be those who are primarily motivated by profit. Reasoning that certification can raise profits if it raises revenues and/or decreases costs, this chapter examines both existing literature and new empirical data on the popular Australian ECO Certification scheme to draw tentative conclusions about the circumstances in which certification is likely to increase operator revenues. It finds little evidence to suggest that certification will raise revenues unless consumers can, simultaneously, be convinced that certification is capable of ‘making a difference’. The policy implication of this finding is that certification schemes must be able to clearly articulate and market this message to tourists if they are to attract more voluntary members and thus advance the sustainable tourism agenda. This is, of course, unless they are concurrently able to lower operator costs — a topic worthy of future study.