Bergen is labelled as Sustainable Destination

Destinations play a key role in the progress towards sustainable tourism and travel. We are therefore proud that Bergen is the largest destination in the Nordics to be labelled as Sustainable destination.

Sustainable Destination is the only national labelling scheme in the Nordic region for travel destinations. It is a quality mark for destinations that has committed to work systematically towards more sustainable tourism, preserving local communities, natural areas and cultural heritage, and reducing the environmental footprint from tourism. As a major cruise port Bergen is also evaluated on certain cruise criteria (in Norwegian) in addition to the 31 and 84 other criteria and indicators in the labelling scheme. 

Holding the label does not mean that Bergen as a destination is completely sustainable just yet. However, it means that Bergen have embarked on a long-term process of continues improvement, that we monitor the positive and negative impact of tourism, that we have implemented measures to reduce the negative impact from tourism and that we are working to strengthen the positive impact from tourism in Bergen. Destinations part of the labelling scheme are evaluated every three years and must show improvement at each evaluation.   

Visit Bergen works together with The Municipality of Bergen, The Port of Bergen, and our members to ensure long term commitment to sustainable development. Together we have developed a destination strategy (in Norwegian) for sustainable development, which have been approved by all stakeholders. The strategy (in Norwegian) defines challenges and opportunities on the way towards sustainable tourism.  

The municipalities of Austevoll and Tysnes, located south in the Bergen Region is also labelled as Sustainable Destination in a process lead by Visit Sunnhordland. 

In 2023 Visit Bergen have started the process of labelling the remaining municipalities in our region. We are also going to revise our destination strategy.  

Feel free to reach out to Magnus Brekke Nygaard in Visit Bergen if you have any inputs our questions.  

Read more about the work on sustainable travel in Bergen and how you can take more sustainable choices when visiting Bergen.