Beneficiaries to get support for obtaining the National Sustainable Tourism Management System Certification MS 165 are announced

The Mauritius Pro-Handprint Innovation Framework (MauPHI) has been developed in SIM as a hands-on set of standards that considers approaches to limit the negative impacts on the environment while on the other side developing marketable handprint products that support inclusive tourism, social stability, cultural and heritage enhancement, economic benefits to the value chains, indirect and induced businesses.

Although all the ingredients of sustainability are present within MauPHI, it is not a formally recognized standard. In that respect, it was logical to us to support the local set of standards from the Mauritius Standards Bureau, the MS 165 that has been developed in consultation with the tourism actors. In these challenging times, we have all been taken to the task about producing and consuming local as one of the very first initiatives in mitigating the impacts of the global pandemic. The locally developed Standards are on the same line as any other internationally recognized standards by the Global Sustainable Tourism Council and thus beneficiate the same reputation and credibility to the International markets.

Following an Expression of Interest sent to Tour Operators and Operators in the accommodation sector, we are pleased to mention that operators who have satisfied the eligibility criteria are selected to benefit from the certification scheme. Within this first batch, we have 3 Guest Houses, 2 Operators with a Hotel Certificate, 29 Tour Operators and 10 Tourist Residences. These operators are the first organisations that would be certified by the MSB upon successful audits. On the other hand, we are pleasantly surprised to note the interests of 8 bigger operators, not with an SME Certificate, but who would wish to be part of the journey. To that end, it has been decided that the Sustainable Island Project and the Tourism Authority shall be dispensing the same technical support to these organisations too, however without the financial support from the SME Mauritius.

Besides our technical support that we shall be offering to the operators we are in touch with a pool of consultants who have been trained formerly on the standards, who shall be available to accompany the SME’s in their transformation journey.