Standards for ensuring the quality of tours and activities

Standards for ensuring the quality of tours and activities

• Tours/activities operate within the objectives, guidelines, regulations and codes of conduct of the CBT initiative.
• Tours/activities ensure visitors, at all times, observe CBT-approved guidelines for interacting with the culture, natural environment and people of the community.
• Tours/activities have a clearly defined: itinerary and associated price; and documented booking system
• Tours/activities record the visitors on tours, including departure and return times.
• Visitors are informed of the tour itinerary, level of difficulty, possible hazards, safety precautions and regulations or rules that apply to their conduct on the tour.
• Tours operate on a cost-recovery basis and yield a profit to the CBT initiative.
• A quality control and improvement system exists, including a system for visitor feedback on the tour/activity experience, and visitors are actively encouraged to participate in the feedback process.
• Tours/activities respect and contribute to the promotion and preservation/ conservation of local culture and natural environment and provide current and relevant cultural information.
• Tours/activities are designed to be enjoyable, educational, participatory, organized, relevant and thematic.
• Where relevant, tours/activities have clearly defined and documented agreements with inbound tour operators.
• Tours/activities actively facilitate cross-cultural understanding and opportunities for tourists to contribute to local activities alongside host community members.
• Tours provide an appropriate and specialized service for identified tourist markets and attract identified tourist markets through cost-effective means.