Green claims on destination websites: an audit you can run in a day

Destination marketing has leaned on the word “sustainable” for a decade. Regions call themselves eco-friendly, campaigns promise green getaways, and Operator descriptions fill with “eco” this and “low-impact” that. Two regulators now expect all of it to be backed by evidence.

In Australia, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) says environmental and sustainability claims “must be truthful and accurate”, and that there must be “clear evidence to back up all claims”. It names vague terms such as “green”, “eco friendly” and “sustainable” as risky because they say little and can mislead (ACCC⁠ (opens in a new tab)). That has been the position under Australian Consumer Law for some time.

What is new is European. On 3 August, ATDW published guidance on the EU’s Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition Directive, which applies from 27 September 2026 to any business making environmental claims to consumers in EU countries, wherever the business is based (ATDW, August 2026⁠ (opens in a new tab)). Europe is one of the markets Australian destinations court hardest. ATDW’s advice to Operators is to replace terms like “eco-friendly”, “green” and “sustainable” with a specific, measurable statement, or remove them.

This is not legal advice, and the regulators’ own guides are the place to start if you are unsure. It is a practical audit a destination team can run in a day, on its own pages and on the Products it publishes.

Why it matters more for a destination than an Operator

An Operator makes claims about one business. A destination site makes claims about a region, and repeats claims about hundreds of businesses. That gives you two kinds of exposure: the claims you write yourself, in campaigns and region pages, and the claims you republish, in Operator descriptions fed from ATDW.

It also gives you the chance to do this well. A destination that says plainly what its Operators have done, with certifications named and dates attached, is more credible than one that calls itself green.

The audit, in five passes

Pass 1: search your own pages. Use your site search, or a crawl, for these words: sustainable, sustainability, eco, eco-friendly, green, carbon, carbon neutral, net zero, low-impact, responsible, regenerative, environmentally friendly, natural, pristine. Export the list of pages. Most regions find more than they expect, much of it in old campaign pages.

Pass 2: sort each claim. For every hit, ask one question: what is the evidence, and could we link to it?

• Specific and supported. “Twelve of our accommodation Operators hold ecotourism certification”, with the certifier named and a link. Keep it, and check the number.
• Specific but unsupported. “Our region is carbon neutral.” If you can’t show the measurement and its scope, remove it.
• Vague. “Discover our sustainable region.” Rewrite it as something true and specific, or cut it.

Pass 3: check the Products. ATDW’s guidance points Operators to three fields: the Product Description, image captions and alt text. Those flow to your site. You can’t edit an Operator’s ATDW profile, but you can tell them about ATDW’s guidance, and you can check the content your team has added alongside Operator Products, and any custom Products. Anything your team wrote is your claim, not the Operator’s.

Pass 4: check badges and filters. If your site shows a sustainability badge or filters Products by one, find out where the badge comes from and whether it is still current. ATDW retired the Strive 4 Sustainability Scorecard attribute on 30 September 2026 (ATDW release notes⁠ (opens in a new tab)), so a filter built on it will quietly empty. Base any sustainability filter on certifications that are current, and say on the page which ones you count.

Pass 5: images and alt text. Claims hide in images too: a “100% green energy” sign photographed in a hero, or alt text that reads “eco-friendly lodge in pristine rainforest”. Alt text is read by screen readers, search engines and AI assistants, so it carries a claim as surely as a heading does.

How to rewrite a vague claim

The fix is almost always to replace an adjective with a fact. A few patterns:

As the last row shows, honest detail about how a place is protected says more about its care than a green adjective.

Think about what a careful Visitor wants to know at a rainforest waterfall: that the boardwalk keeps feet off roots that took decades to grow, that the pool is quiet before nine in the morning and busy by lunch, and that the car park fills on school holiday weekends. Each of those sentences is specific, checkable and useful. Together they tell a Visitor how to enjoy the place without wearing it out, which is what most sustainability messaging was trying to say in the first place.

The same discipline helps your Operators. A guided walk that names its group size limit, or a cottage that says where its water comes from and what happens in a dry summer, gives the Visitor a reason to choose it that no badge can.

Who to tell

Tell your Operators. Many haven’t seen ATDW’s guidance, and a short note from their regional tourism organisation, with the link and an example rewrite, is the most useful thing you can send this month. Tell your campaign agency, because last year’s creative may still be live. And tell whoever writes your awards entries and annual report, because the same claims tend to travel there.

On Roam

On Roam, Operator Products sync from ATDW automatically, alongside any custom Products you add, and your team can add its own content alongside an Operator’s without editing what the Operator wrote. That makes the audit simpler: one place to search, and a clear line between what the Operator says in ATDW and what your team has written. When an Operator updates their profile, the change reaches your site on the next sync. See how ATDW sync works.

For this year’s other ATDW changes, including the new EV attributes and accessibility accreditation, read ATDW in 2026.