The Certificate for Sustainable Tourism (CST) program was developed to categorize and therefore certify tourism related companies according to the degree in which their operations follow a sustainable model.

The CST was developed to use four fundamental environments as a model for the certification process. The four environments the program is based on are Physical - Biological, Service Plant for the hospitality industry and Service Management for Tour Operators, Customer Interaction and the Socio-Economic Environment.

The program has developed a questionnaire or form which the inspectors must stick to when visiting locations and operations. Some of the specific areas in which the program looks into are the amount of generated pollution, risk management of the environment, the use of efficient technologies to save water and electricity, proper guest education as to conservation, locally produced food, company’s effort to avoid dishonest practices among others.

The CST program has developed a rating system that goes from 0 to 5 and that represents the company’s sustainability; 0 being the least sustainable with a score of 20% or less and 5 being the highest score attainable with a percentage of 95% or more. In order to reach one of these levels, each individual score of the 4 areas inspected must be concomitant. In other words, in order to reach a CST 5 level, the company must score 95% or more in each of the 4 environments.

In order to learn which hotels and companies have a CST certificate, go to www.visitcostrica.com and click on the Sustainability link on the bottom left hand side menu. A complete list of hotels and tour operators as well as their CST level is displayed.