The World Charter for Sustainable Tourism +20 continues its path in the tourism sector as the vehicle towards achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. And it does so with special strength after the proclamation of 2017 as the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development by both UNWTO and the UN.

In this context, on Thursday January 21 at 11:00 a.m. in the Basque Stand, the Responsible Tourism Institute and the Basque Tourism Agency (Basquetour) will hand over to the UNWTO Regional Director for Europe the new World Charter for Sustainable Tourism +20, as a measure to foster adherence to the Charter of destinations and all kinds of agents and tourism realities.

The Responsible Tourism Institute will attend the International Tourism Fair (FITUR) on 20 and 21 January. Apart from promoting the accession of destinations and tourism entities to the World Charter for Sustainable Tourism +20 and hence the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals applied to tourism, the RTI will participate in the ReThink Hotel Awards and the VII Tourism&Sustainability Forum, Fitur Green.

The ReThink Hotel Awards (Thursday 21 at 15:30) aim to encourage and enable sustainable rehabilitation of hotels and disseminate the main benefits that sustainability brings to the hotel, reducing energy consumption and therefore a reduction in costs; as well as to the destination, through the generation of greater tourist attraction as well as the value of promotion and strategic positioning with distinctive sustainability.

The Responsible Tourism Institute chairman, Tomas Azcárate, will be part of this important contest as a jury of the same, a contest whose main benefits highlights the highest recognition and dissemination on sustainable hotel rehabilitation in Spain, the enhancement of sustainability as a strategic value for the hotel promotion, and the creation of destination: Spain as "green" destination.

Moreover, regarding the Fitur Green Sustainability Forum the Director of the Institute, Patricio Azcárate, will take part of the discussion: "The commercial return sustainability. The domino effect", from the Panel: "SUSTAINABLE STRATEGY TO ACHIEVE RESULTS" to be held from 13:00 to 14:00 on 21 January.

In the panel discussion also participates the CEO of the Society for the Promotion of Tourism of Lanzarote, Hector Fernández. The participation of Lanzarote stresses once again the intense work done in the island to promote sustainability as a tourism management model, a model in which Lanzarote is a pioneer not only for hosting in 1995 the World Conference on Sustainable Tourism, the first summit to talk of sustainable tourism and give it value through the World Charter for Sustainable Tourism.