The Malta Tourism Authority ECO Certification is a proud member of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC). They support GSTC mission of making all tourism more sustainable by increasing the reach of the sustainable tourism practices to traditional, small, and large–scale operations and they endorse the principles of the Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria (GSTC criteria). Their standard for ensuring the environmental, socioeconomic, and cultural sustainability of hotels and apart-hotels on the Maltese Islands has been recognised by the Global Sustainable Tourism Council as fully reflecting the GSTC criteria.

The Eco-Certification Malta was benchmarked against the GSTC standard.
Eco-Certification Malta is compliant with following hearts of the staygreencheck :



The Eco Certification standard performed Almost Perfect, according to the staygreencheck methodology. All the accommodations Eco Certification will show the three hearts of sustainability.

Eco-certification
The Eco-certification is the national scheme for ensuring the environmental, socioeconomic, and cultural sustainability of hotels and farmhouses on the Maltese Islands. The scheme was launched by the Malta Tourism Authority in 2002 and today represents over 16% of hotel accommodation covering 5-star, 4-star and 3-star categories. The criteria were last revised in June 2012 to be in line with the GSTC criteria making the shift from an environmental scheme to a sustainability scheme. Third party audits are carried out every two years to ensure that the hotels are meeting the requirements of the scheme.
The new criteria follow a shift from an environmental scheme to a sustainable scheme covering environmental, social, cultural, economic, quality and health & safety.
- The certificate is valid for 2 years.
- The auditing process is done by independent environmental auditors and executed by Malta Tourism Authority.
- See the Eco-Certification Malta standards for accommodations here
- Do you want to know more about Eco-Certification Malta click here
Best practices
ECO certification aims to improve the sustainable performance of hotels on the Maltese Islands, and focuses on energy efficiency, reducing water consumption, waste management and green procurement. The scheme also aims to increase sustainable awareness amongst employees as well as hotel guests.