City of Melbourne Visitor Services

What was your main reason for piloting the program?

City of Melbourne Visitor Services originally decided to take part in the S4S pilot as a way of supporting the new Ecotourism Australia initiative. The City of Melbourne is an active player in the sustainability space and by putting our visitor services through the process, we knew we would gain firsthand experience of what the S4S Scorecard program involved and what businesses would receive at the end. This would then provide us with an opportunity to communicate the benefits and outputs of this program to businesses within the municipality, while also highlighting where our own Visitor Services might need to focus their attention moving forward.

What do you believe to be the main benefit of the scorecard program for your business?

The S4S scorecard program allowed the City of Melbourne to understand where our Visitor Services are performing really well and the areas that we need to focus our attention to, in order to continually improve in this space. Completing the scorecard also prompted us to think more about how we can effectively communicate our sustainability message to visitors and businesses.

Did you find the portal and supporting guidance easy to navigate and understand?

The S4S portal was fairly straightforward to use. It took roughly 8 to 10 hours to fully complete the first time. However we did this over a few weeks and could pause our application at any time. It requires you to upload proof and examples for your responses [in some sections] which was the time consuming part for us. To begin with we printed out the questions/sections to gain a better understanding of everything we needed to complete and what information we needed to source for the application. Any questions that we were unsure about, usually became clear when you read through the additional information.

How did you find the process of addressing the criteria?

For the most part addressing the criteria was straightforward. For someone completely new to sustainability having some examples is always helpful.

What were the main helpful insights produced by your report?

The report was well laid out and the feedback very useful. Any criteria where we could improve upon explained why we didn’t score top marks and then provided suggestions on things to consider introducing or improving moving forward. We have now taken our results and placed them into an Action Plan with the hope of gaining an even higher score next time around.

How will you promote the scorecard to your customers?

We plan to promote the scorecard and our results internally through our channels and will also look at ways that we can promote this program to other businesses located within the City of Melbourne.

• Introduce a balanced structure of member-elected Directors (maximum 5) and Board-appointed Directors (maximum 4)
• Update Director terms from 2 years to 3 years, with a maximum of two terms (6 years total)
• Meet current regulatory requirements for a Company Limited by Guarantee
• Be modernised and contemporary to meet Ecotourism Australia’s strategic imperatives and our objectives
• Provide a streamlined and concise governance framework.

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