The tourism developed in a rational way can contribute towards promoting new tourist models that are not aggressive to the environment and that are enriching from a social and cultural point of view, likewise taking on board the need to move towards these new models through certification. In order to achieve this, it shares the view expressed by the UNWTO that certification systems applicable to tourism play an increasingly important role in the regulation of tourist services, providing notable benefits to the environment and to society as a whole in the relevant destinations.

Indeed, one of the most relevant challenges of the present day incumbent on all the parties involved in tourism is to design a model to develop sustainable tourism that allows the development of “sustainable destinations”.

Thus, from the viewpoint of IRT, far from developing tourism with a focus exclusively on demand, whereby tourism is perceived as the group or flow of visitors to a place, in which a group of consumers, tourists or visitors is identified but no product is identified, we understand tourism as a complex system which merges visitors, the resident population, territory and heritage into one based on an integrative system of planning in which the environmental variable should be taken into consideration alongside the other sustainability, social, cultural, economic, institutional and ethical variables in relation to the producers and users of tourist services.

The planning involved in the certification provided through the Responsible Tourism System aims to gain this recognition of tourists, institutions and the business sector, offering rigorous standards that are consistent with local sustainability and guaranteeing continues improvement on the part of tourist service providers with the view to improving production forms and sustainable and responsible tourist consumption on a permanent basis.