- Minimize negative impacts on nature and culture that can damage a destination.
- Educate traveller on the importance of conservation.
- Stress the importance of responsible business, which works cooperatively with local needs and deliver conservation benefits.
- Direct revenues to the conservation and management of natural and protected areas.
- Emphasize need for regional tourism zoning and visitor management plans designed for either regions or natural areas that are slated to become eco-destinations.
- Emphasize use of environmental and social baseline studies, as well as long term monitoring programs, to assess and minimize impacts.
- Strive to maximize economic benefit for the host country, business and communities particularly people living in and adjacent to natural and protected areas.
- Seek to ensure that tourism development does not exceed the social and environmental limits of change as determined by researchers in cooperation with local residents.
- Rely on infrastructure that has been developed in harmony with the environment, minimizing use of fossil fuels, conserving local plants and wildlife, and blending with the natural and cultural environment.
