As the U.S. member body to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) is looking for representatives from relevant U.S. organizations to participate in ISO Technical Committee (TC) 228 on Tourism and related services. ANSI is also actively seeking an organization to serve as the U.S. Technical Advisory Group (TAG) Administrator to ISO TC 228. U.S. TAG Administrators manage the development and transmission (via ANSI) of U.S. positions on activities and ballots of the ISO TC, including the approval, reaffirmation, revision, and withdrawal of ISO standards.
As a major category of international trade services, tourism represents one of the fastest-growing economic sectors in the world. According to the specialized agency of the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), international tourist arrivals worldwide are expected to increase by 3.3% each year between 2010 and 2030 to reach 1.8 billion by 2030. UNWTO's Tourism Highlights 2017 edition also reveals that tourism has grown faster than world trade for the past five years.
With these surging projections, standardization work is essential to support the wide array of services offered by tourism providers around the world. ISO TC 228 is responsible for more than two dozen published ISO standards and updates, including specifications on recreational diving services, terminology for hotels, wellness spa services, and requirements for the training of recreational snorkeling guides, to name a few.
ISO recently highlighted the ways in which it is supporting innovative tourism standardization work, including through the creation of TC 228 Working Groups focused on sustainability and accessibility in tourism. Other areas of standardization work underway include international volunteer tourism, service requirements of medical spas, and essential requirements for luxury harbors, among others.
ISO TC 228's current structure of Working Groups (WGs) is as follows:
Get Involved with ISO TC 228, Tourism and Related Services
Created in 2005 under the twinned leadership of UNE (Spain) and INNORPI (Tunisia), ISO TC 228 includes participants representing 99 countries and 21 organizations. Participation in ISO activities ensures early access to information that may shape the market in the future, and gives companies the opportunity to represent their industry as thought leaders in the development of international standards.
Interested stakeholders can contact ANSI's Rachel Hawthorne ([email protected]) for additional information.