Italy-based certification organization Vireo launched Vireo Japan in partnership with Sasutena Certification Center of Japan, which became an official organization in Japan to support hotels and destinations for acquisition of GSTC (Global Sustainable Tourism Council) certificate. 

GSTC is a non-profit organization that manages, and certifies international standards for sustainable tourism (GSTC Criteria), and develops human resources involved in sustainable tourism. GSTC certification is an international certification system that evaluates whether tourism businesses, regions, and others are implementing sustainable initiatives based on the GSTC Criteria.

Vireo is the third-party international environmental certification organization in a variety of industries including tourism, forestries and fisheries. As a GSTC certification organization, Vireo has audited more than 250 hotels in 20 countries, based on South Tyrol, London, Kuala Lumpur and Shanghai as well as its headquarter Padova.

Vireo Japan provides tourism operators, hotels or local governments in Japan with seamless certification services in Japanese. 

“Vireo's values are integrity, expertise, transparency, commitment and sustainability,” Vireo CEO Luigi Mazzaglia said at a press conference in Japan. “Vireo is the only organization that certifies both regions and accommodations, as GSTC certification becomes increasingly important.”

Vireo CEO Luigi Mazzaglia

Vireo Japan specializes in ‘GSTC-I’ for hotels or ryokans and travel companies and ‘GSTC-D’ for destinations, explaining that acquisition of GSTC benefits them for improvement of brand images and corporate values for businesses, cost reduction and operational efficiency, and branding for local communities, strengthening of relationships between stakeholders, and objective analysis of local strengths and challenges.

Mazzaglia said, “The tourism industry is extremely important to Japan. Both Japanese hotels and local communities have great potential, and GSTC-compliant initiatives will create new value for businesses, local communities, and visitors.”