One of Queenstown's environment-conscious holiday parks has been rewarded for its efforts, becoming an "EarthCheck certified destination" after registration from the global sustainability and environmental auditors.
Queenstown Top 10 Holiday Park "Creeksyde" has now joined other like-minded travel and tourism operators around the world with the certification, which involves a more stringent assessment process than Green Globe, with which it has previously achieved seven annual certifications.
EarthCheck recognises Creeksyde carries out its daily operations in ways which are compliant with the highest standards of the EarthCheck programme - the largest environmental management system used by the travel and tourism industry for benchmarking and certifying sustainable operational practices.
Creeksyde is renowned for its dedication to sustainable practices and in 2003 was the world's first holiday park to achieve Green Globe benchmarks.
In 2004, it was the first to be Green Globe certified.
Owners Erna and Tonnie Spijkerbosch said their position at the forefront of sustainable practice and environmental awareness was simply a result of applying their environmental philosophies from day one.
"We were always focused on a triple bottom line.
"Our people - customers and staff - our environment and financial viability are integral to our business and this approach has always produced great results," Mrs Spijkerbosch said.
The couple were always looking for ways to improve their business and recently attended EarthCheck's first Destino Conference and full-day training session.
"The auditing and benchmarking process with EarthCheck also gives us a strong set of reports, which show us where we are going.
"Our benchmarking results show we're performing very strongly, better than best practice.
"But we still have things we can improve on and goals to reach to further improve our results," she said.
