Around fifty companies from the Tourism sector signed yesterday the Commitment Charter of the 360° Tourism Companies Programme, an initiative included in the Plan Reactivate Tourism | Build the Future and the responsibility of Turismo de Portugal and respective partners.
The Commitment Charter provides a common agenda for sustainable value creation for the sector, integrating adherence to environmental, social and governance principles and setting a set of responsibilities aimed at evolving the collective vision of tourism companies as agents of value creation for workers, suppliers, community, territory and environment.
Companies from the sector, the programme's partners, business associations and other entities with competencies in the area of sustainability participated in the session, which was also attended by the Minister of Economy and Sea, António Costa Silva, and the Secretary of State for Tourism, Trade and Services, Rita Marques, as well as the heads of Turismo de Portugal, Luís Araújo and Carlos Abade.
In addition to the formalisation by the 54 subscribing companies, which together represent around 1.9 billion euros in terms of turnover (around 10% of the sector's total) and 14,595 employees, the results of the Programme to date were also presented, and the development of the ESG Management Platform was also announced, by Banco Português de Fomento, in articulation with Turismo de Portugal, to which the companies involved in the Programme may access.
On the occasion, the Secretary of State for Tourism, Trade and Services announced the allocation, under the Support Line for the Qualification of Supply, of 20 million euros to fund investment projects which main objective is to develop skills in sustainability.
Regarding the Commitment Charter, signed by the pioneer companies in attending the 360° Tourism Companies training initiatives, the same is available for subscription by all companies in the sector, inviting them to take up the challenge of stimulating organisational cultures around sustainability. The new edition of the training programme starts tomorrow, on 20 April, with around 60 companies already enrolled.
The aim of the 360° Tourism Companies Programme is to speed up the process of incorporating ESG (Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance) indicators in companies, challenging them to actively rethink their environmental, social and governance practices. The programme focuses on the development of actions that include training tourism companies to incorporate ESG indicators into their management processes, providing monitoring tools and sustainability report models, and promoting the public recognition of organisations.
The 360° Tourism Companies Programme is an initiative included in Pillar 4 - Build the Future of the Reactivate Tourism | Build the Future Action Plan, which aims to encourage companies in the sector to report their performance in terms of sustainability, supporting them technically in the integration of ESG - Environmental, Social and Governance factors in the business strategy and organisational culture and guiding them in the process of regular reporting of information on their environmental, social and governance practices.
Com o Programa Empresas Turismo 360º, pretende-se, assim, acelerar o processo de incorporação dos indicadores ESG (Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance) nas empresas, desafiando-as a, ativamente, reequacionarem as suas práticas ambientais, sociais e de governança. O programa aposta no desenvolvimento de ações que incluem a capacitação das empresas do turismo para a incorporação dos indicadores ESG nos respetivos processos de gestão, a disponibilização de instrumentos de monitorização, de modelos de relatórios de sustentabilidade e inclui a promoção do reconhecimento público das organizações.
O Programa Empresas Turismo 360º é uma iniciativa inscrita no Pilar 4 – Construir o Futuro do Plano de Ação Reativar o Turismo | Construir o Futuro, que visa incentivar as empresas do setor a reportar o seu desempenho em matéria de sustentabilidade, apoiando-as tecnicamente na integração dos fatores ESG – Environmental, Social and Governance na estratégia de negócio e na cultura organizacional e orientando-as no processo de reporte regular de informação sobre as suas práticas ambientais, sociais e de governação.
