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Singapore Tourism Board

Tourism Sustainability Programme

Be supported on your sustainability journey.

Last updated 19 January 2026

Singapore’s Sustainable Tourism Strategy

Singapore Tourism Board (STB) developed a vision for Singapore to become a City in Nature, where Large Experiences come with Small Footprints. The following focus areas articulate the strategies to achieve our vision, which needs to be executed in close collaboration between the Government and tourism sector.

Strategic Focus #1: Becoming a sustainable urban destination

  • Develop and grow tourism products sustainably – To remain relevant, tourism businesses must continue to develop or relook their sustainable products and experiences to cater to growing consumer appetites for meaningful travel. This includes greening our tourism infrastructure to be more energy efficient, enhancing visitor accessibility, ensuring climate resilience, and developing our experiences to support local businesses and showcase local culture.  

  • Ensure our tourism growth is done sustainably - To ensure tourism is developed responsibly, and does not create disamenities to the destination  

Strategic Focus #2: Building a sustainable tourism sector

  • Pursue sustainability certification – To continue to meet rising corporate and leisure visitors’ expectations for sustainable travel, we call on businesses to pursue nationally and/or internationally-recognised certification so as to better understand your sustainability profile while pursuing sustainability in a holistic manner, covering environmental, socioeconomic and cultural sustainability. 

  • Build the sustainability-related capabilities of our workforce – To ensure the skillsets of the incoming and existing tourism manpower are "greened" in areas not limited to carbon management, green procurement, waste management, climate resilience, accessibility, supporting local businesses, and marketing sustainability credibly. 

Strategic Focus #3: Showcasing Singapore as a sustainable urban destination

  • Showcase sustainable experiences and stories across various facets of sustainability including environmental, social and cultural sustainability 

  • Highlight Singapore’s strengths as an innovative destination

  • Pursue credible destination ranking/certifications to affirm your sustainability efforts

Sustainability Roadmaps

We are committed to paving the way for a more sustainable future. Explore our latest roadmaps that outline strategies for various sectors within the tourism industry:

Tourism Sustainability Programme

The Tourism Sustainability Program (TSP) aims to support tourism businesses' sustainability journeys at all stages of development, equipping you to build your workforce capabilities and develop innovative solutions to capture opportunities from sustainable travel.

Focus areas of the TSP and relevant resources and support.

No.

Strategy Focus Area

Resource

Grant/Funding support

1

Pursue sustainability certification
Through the certification process, businesses can also better understand how to improve their end-to-end business processes and take stock of their sustainability capabilities to develop interventions to address areas for improvement.

For Business Operations

  1. The GSTC Criteria serve as the global standards for sustainability in travel and tourism. The Criteria are used for education and awareness-raising, policy-making for businesses and government agencies and other organisation types, measurement and evaluation, and as a basis for certification. They are the result of a worldwide effort to develop a common language about sustainability in tourism. They are arranged in four pillars of (a) sustainable management, (b) socioeconomic impacts, (c) cultural impacts and (d) environmental impacts.

Depending on your industry, you may choose the appropriate Criteria accordingly:
a. GSTC Attraction Criteria
b. GSTC Industry Criteria for Hotels
c. GSTC Industry Criteria for Tour Operators
d. GSTC MICE Criteria for Venues, Event Organizers, and Events & Exhibitions

  1. The Singapore MICE Sustainability Certification (MSC) Framework equips and certifies businesses for adopting sustainable practices in events and raises sustainability standards across Singapore’s MICE industry. The standards for MICE event organisers and venues within the Framework are GSTC-Recognised.

  2. Workshop Agreement (WA) 3 Sustainable MICE – Guidelines for waste management covers guidelines and best practices for the MICE industry on setting waste management goals and reducing specific types of waste through the reduce, reuse, and recycle approach.

  3. Workshop Agreement (WA) 4 Sustainable MICE – Guidelines for carbon emissions management covers guidelines and best practices for the MICE industry to establish verifiable practices for moving towards carbon-neutral events through implementing changes to reduce potential man-made emissions and offsetting the remainder with the purchase of credible carbon credits. It is applicable across the MICE supply chain, including event organisers, venue owners and operators, event builders, food and beverage providers, exhibitors and logistics providers and will cover the measurement, reduction, calculation, verification and offset of emitted Greenhouse Gas (GHG). It is applicable across the MICE supply chain, including event organisers, venues, event builders, food and beverage providers and exhibitors.

  4. Events
    a. ISO 20121 Sustainable Event Management Certification
    b. Singapore Environment Council (SEC) Eco Event Certification

Certification related costs can be relevant qualifying costs for the following grants. 

  1. Business Improvement Fund (BIF) by STB

Leisure events:

  1. Leisure Events Fund (LEF) by STB

  2. Kickstart Fund (KF) by STB


For Building Owners

  1. BCA Green Mark 2021 (GM: 2021) – is an internationally recognised green building certification scheme tailored for the tropical climate. It aims to raise Singapore’s standards in energy performance and place greater emphasis on designing for maintainability, reducing embodied carbon across a building’s life cycle, using smart technologies, enhancing a building’s resilience to climate change and creating healthier environments for building users.

Green Mark Incentive Schemes by Building and Construction Authority

2

Leverage innovation to support sustainable tourism outcomes
Innovation and emerging solutions in the tourism-tech space can help the transition towards a more sustainable tourism landscape.

1. Test-bedding Solutions 

2. Compendium of Sustainability Solution Providers

  • A collation of solution providers in carbon management, sustainability certification, sustainability reporting which can help to provide targeted solutions for your sustainability journeys.

  • For building owners - Singapore is advancing our transition into a low-carbon built environment through the Singapore Green Building Masterplan (SGBMP), an initiative by Singapore’s Building and Construction Authority (BCA) and the Singapore Green Building Council. Based on BCA’s Super Low Energy Building Technology Roadmap in exploring energy-efficiency, the hierarchy that buildings should look at are: 1) Passive Design 2) Active Solutions (i.e. energy efficiency) 3) Smart Energy Management 4) Renewable Energy.

    • Find out about the current technologies to achieve SLE in Annex A (pg 35-44) of the SLE Building Tech Roadmap.

    • Search for technology solution providers from the SLE Smart Hub - a resource centre with a centralised national database of energy-efficiency technologies with powerful tools for data analytics, for building owners and developers to achieve SLE projects.

Please note that the list does not constitute endorsement or recommendation by STB or the other government agencies. The list is to provide reference for organisations to facilitate your sustainability journeys and initiatives.

Technology/ Innovation Adoption

  1. Business Improvement Fund (BIF) by STB

3

Build the sustainability-related capabilities of the tourism workforce
The tourism sector is powered by its workforce. STB and other government agencies will continue to support businesses to enable the ‘greening' of tourism manpower.

1. Training Programmes Topics:

  • Sustainability 101

  • Sustainability Certification/ Sustainability Reporting

  • Carbon Management

  • Product Development/ Supply Chain Management

  • Green Marketing & Storytelling

Courses on the Green Economy by SkillsFuture


*More hotel-focused training
*More MICE-focused training 

  1. Career Conversion Programme (CCP) for Sustainability Professionals by WSG

  2. Training Industry Professionals in Tourism (TIP-iT) by STB

2.Industry Guidance/ Other information/ resources

-

Opportunities in Sustainable Tourism

Rise in Sustainable Travel

  • 93% of travellers want to make more sustainable travel choices and to some extent have done so

  • For the first time, more than half (53%) of travellers are now conscious of tourism's impact on local communities as well as the environment. 

  • 73% of travellers want the money they spend to go back into the local community to support the destinations' economy 

Source: Booking.com Travel & Sustainability Report 2025

Potential addressable market for Singapore

51.5 – 61.6 million visitors are interested in travelling to Singapore sustainably over the next decade. According to a 2021 study conducted by STB based on six study markets (Australia, China, Indonesia, Japan, UK, and USA, this segment has also indicated a stronger willingness to pay for more sustainable products and services. This segment is likely to include visitors who:

  • Engage in sustainable behaviours day-to-day,

  • Typically 25 to 45 years old,

  • Employed,

  • And travel with their partner and/or children.

According to a 2023 Overseas Visitors Survey, visitors in Singapore are also aware of and have taken actions such as booking a sustainable hotel or taking a sustainable form of transport.

Local Community Engagement

Sustainable tourism also supports the local community such as through the greening of existing jobs in the sector and encouraging tourists' purchase of local products. Tourism businesses can look at re-engaging locals through sustainable tourism experiences, turning them into advocates for Singapore.

  •  Most Singapore residents want to make tourists feel positive about Singapore.

  • The majority viewed tourism’s contribution to Singapore positively and agreed that tourism promotes an overall positive image of Singapore.

  • Tourist spending on local job offerings and job creation were the top two contributors of tourism to Singapore's economy.

  • Residents generally found Singapore’s tourism experiences enjoyable and would revisit.

  • The majority also felt that Singapore’s tourism sector needs to stay competitive by constantly introducing and refreshing offerings.

Source: STB’s survey of Singapore residents, 2023.