Report on Sustainability Practice
Weight: 40%, Length: 2000 words (+-) 10%, excluding references and appendices
Task Description:
This report requires students to critically evaluate tourism practices and how such practices align with or deviate from principles of sustainability. Students need to choose a tourism business in order to analyse their sustainability practices based on given criteria. The tasks include:
- Briefly outline the business chosen for this assessment. The business needs to be either an accommodation provider or a tour company operating in a specific location. Travel agencies and global hotel chains are NOT appropriate businesses for this assessment. It is recommended that the business needs to have enough information available from online sources or that students can visit the operation to assist in their assessment.
- Identify the most important sustainability issues and challenges facing the business and its operation.
- Apply either Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria for Hotels and Tour Operators or The Ecotourism Australia ROC and ECO certification criteria to assess how the business is addressing sustainability. Identify three (3) areas of strength and three (3) areas of weakness in the business’s sustainability practice. The application of the criteria will be directed by the student’s assessment of the important sustainability issues facing the operation.
- Based on your analysis and identification of weaknesses, make three recommendations to the business to improve sustainability practices. Include peer reviewed articles to identify the problems associated with implementing sustainable tourism and how suggested improvements could be made.
Notes:
- You should have a minimum of 8 academic journal articles to support your analysis.
- Do NOT cite your lecturers, or lecture notes as references.
- You may use newspaper articles and other website reports as evidence of issues in addition to peer reviewed articles.
Report Structure and Required Contents
- Introduction (introducing the business and the purpose of the report)
- Sustainability Issues (key economic, socio-cultural, and environmental issues and challenges the business is facing)
- Assessment of Operation (assess the business operation against key criteria in the sustainability certification program you have chosen)
- Strengths and weaknesses (based on your analysis in the last section, identify 3 strengths and 3 problematic areas of the business’ sustainable practice)
- Potential Improvement and concluding comments (make 3 recommendations based on the literature and/or best practices and conclude the report)
- References (use APA style)
| Criteria | HD | D | C | Pass | Fail |
| Above 8.5/10
Above 12.75/15 Above 4.25/5 |
8.5-7.5/10
12.75-11.25/15 4.25-3.75/5 |
7.5-6.5/10
11.25-9.75/15 3.75-3.25/5 |
6.5-5/10
9.75-7.5/15 3.25-2.5/5 |
Below 5/10
Below 7.5/15 Below 2.5/5 |
|
| Identifies an appropriate business, outlines the business (10 marks) | Identifies a business that perfectly fits the purpose of the assignment. Excellent description of the business | Identifies a business that well fits the purpose of the assignment. Very good description of the business | Identifies a business that fits the purpose of the assignment. Clear description of the business | Identifies a business that slightly fits the purpose of the assignment. Basic description of the business | Picks an inappropriate business, little or no description of the business |
| Identifies relevant sustainable principles in practice (10 marks) | Demonstrates a deep analysis of sustainability principles | Demonstrates good analysis of sustainability principles | Identifies some analysis of sustainability principles | Adequate analysis of sustainability principles | Limited analysis |
| Demonstrates an ability to apply sustainability criteria in the tourism operation
(10 marks) |
Comprehensively applies sustainability criteria to the tourism sector demonstrating thorough understanding | Effectively applies sustainability criteria to the tourism sector in a manner which demonstrates good understanding | Applies sustainability criteria to tourism sector demonstrating adequate understanding | Attempts to apply sustainability criteria to tourism sector | Provides only superficial application of principles to tourism sector |
| Demonstrates an ability to critically analyse and suggest improvements.
(15 marks) |
Comprehensive analysis and a range of improvements with an understanding of relationships | Good analysis and some improvements with an understanding of relationships | Adequate analysis and a range of improvements with adequate understanding of relationships | Adequate analysis and a range of improvements with limited understanding of relationships | Incomplete analysis and a range of improvements with limited understanding of relationships |
| Style and Mechanics of Writing
(10 marks) |
Writes by integrating and interpreting other’s and own material in a fluent and critical manner. No spelling errors and no grammatical errors | Writes by integrating and interpreting others’ and own material in a fluent manner. No spelling errors and occasional grammatical errors | Mostly writes by integrating and interpreting others and own material. No spelling errors and some grammatical errors | Mostly writes by paraphrasing others’ material but with some integration of own ideas. Some spelling errors and some grammatical errors | Mostly writes by paraphrasing others’ material. Many spelling errors and many grammatical errors |
| Adherence to referencing and citation standards
(5 marks) |
Accurate referencing which consistently adheres to APA style throughout | Good, consistent referencing which generally adheres to APA style throughout | Solid referencing which generally adheres to APA style throughout | Some attempt at referencing APA style | Poor attempt at referencing APA style |
| Criteria | Additional information |
| Identifies an appropriate business
(section 1) |
Choose one operation. Some students have asked if they can choose a hotel chain or a cruise line. This is not appropriate as there is no guarantee that all hotels within the chain would apply the same practices. Different locations also present different sets of challenges for businesses. Refer to week 4 workshop PPT for information on identifying an appropriate business.
Section 1 should provide clear description of the chosen business, e.g., location, nature and scale of the business. |
| Identifies relevant sustainable principles in practice
(section 2) |
This section narrows the scope of the report and tells the reader what is important in the report. It does not have to be a long section. Think big picture before you narrow into the certification schemes.
A number of options here: You can discuss the main issues your specific industry/sector is facing, and/or discuss the key issues the local area is facing. Should be supported by academic references. Ensure that you cover broader issues across the triple bottom line. You can expand more on specific dimension(s) of the TBL that are more relevant to your chosen business and its location. Try not to give specific information about what the organisation is doing/solutions/examples as this will be needed as evidence to support your assessment in the next section. |
| Demonstrates an ability to apply sustainability criteria in the tourism operation
(section 3) |
State which sustainability certification scheme you have chosen to use to make an assessment of the organisation. Reference it. Add it as an appendix (Optional).
A good assessment of business practice is set in the context of key issues you have previously highlighted in Section 2.0. You may need to assess using sub-criterion e.g. GSTC Criteria – SECTION A: ‘Demonstrate effective sustainable management’ is too broad. SECTION A has EIGHT sub-criteria. E.g. A3: All personnel receive periodic guidance and training regarding their roles and responsibilities with respect to environmental, social, cultural, economic, quality, health and safety issues. You may choose the most relevant sub-criteria (possibly use sub-headings) then provide evidence of whether your organisation is currently doing this or not. Justify your choice of criteria. **If it is not clear which criteria you are using and/or which criterion you are providing evidence for it will affect your mark. Although there is no need for extensive references in this section as you are using the criteria, you should at least cite the certification scheme and where you obtained information about the organisation’s practice (e.g., the organisation’s website). |
| Demonstrates an ability to critically analyse and suggest improvements.
(section 4 & 5) |
Section 4: Based on your analysis of section 3, provide a summary which identifies 3 strengths and 3 problematic areas of your chosen business. Must LINK to the previous sections as this provides the evidence/justification for your suggestions.
Section 5: Need to suggest specific improvements that actually make a significant change/improvement to sustainability for the operation and are significant for sustainable tourism. Any improvements/recommendations you suggest should address the problematic areas you identified. Don’t introduce anything new. You should have references in here if you want high marks. You need to situate your recommendations with the significance of these problems/solutions within the overall context of sustainable tourism. For example – are the recommendations addressing a common problem that needs to be overcome and/ or are they difficult to achieve? |
| Style and Mechanics of Writing
|
Report style needed – not conversational English. Avoid using ‘first person’ and abbreviation (e.g., can’t, don’t)
Introduce each section clearly. Use appropriate headings. 1.5 line spacing. Academic font. Page numbers. Be consistent with the name of your operation. Choose one and stick with it throughout the document. Avoid starting a sentence with a “direct citation”. Must paraphrase your work as much as possible. “Direct citations” MUST be acknowledged. You should check similarity % using draft submission point. Please proofread your work – use Ginger grammar checker if you cannot get a proof reader. |
| Adherence to referencing and citation standards | APA Referencing. TIP: Style must be consistent throughout. “Direct citations” NEED a page number or paragraph number in in-text references. Minimum of 8 journal articles are needed for the final report. The reference list should be in alphabetical order. Your organisation and the criteria you have used should also show in the reference list. |
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