Rainforest Alliance (tourism)
TRAVEL
CONFIDENCE HIGH · ANALYSIS ONLY, NOT AN AUDIT OR CERTIFICATION
Our read
This is a retired mark and that is the finding. Rainforest Alliance does not certify tourism. Management of its Sustainable Tourism Standards for Hotel and Lodging Services and for Inbound Tour Operators transferred to Preferred by Nature, formerly NEPCon, on 1 October 2018, and Rainforest Alliance's current certification scope is agriculture and forestry. A site search on its own website returns nothing for tourism in either English or Spanish. The three scores are set to 1 to reflect status, not to judge the design of the historical programme, whose standard documents are no longer published and should not be characterised from memory. The distinction that matters is between the retired scheme and its successor. Preferred by Nature's Standard for Sustainable Travel Activities V1.1, published March 2024, is GSTC-Recognized, and Preferred by Nature became a GSTC-accredited certification body on 29 May 2026. That is a live, externally accredited scheme, and it is a stronger credential than the mark it replaced. An operator citing Rainforest Alliance for tourism is not citing it. Where a tourism business still shows a Rainforest Alliance tourism claim or a green frog in a travel context, treat it as a legacy claim and ask what it holds now.
What it covers
- STATUS: not an active certification. Nothing is currently certified under this mark by Rainforest Alliance
- Historically: two standards, one for hotel and lodging services and one for inbound tour operators, covering environmental, social and economic practices
- Historically strongest in Latin America, where Rainforest Alliance ran the programme alongside its agricultural work
- Rainforest Alliance's current certification scope is agriculture only — coffee, cocoa, tea, bananas, fruit and other crops — plus forest management through FSC. Tourism is absent from it
- The successor scheme is Preferred by Nature's Standard for Sustainable Travel Activities V1.1, published 20 March 2024, applicable to hotels, tour operators and other tourism organisations
- The successor is GSTC-Recognized as equivalent to the GSTC Industry Standard for Hotels and Tour Operators, and Preferred by Nature achieved GSTC accreditation as a certification body on 29 May 2026
- The successor operates a three-year certificate with annual surveillance audits within 60 days before each anniversary, and a full reassessment at renewal
What it leaves out
Not a criticism of the scheme. A standard is a scope, and this is where this one ends.
- There is no current standard document, no current audit, no current certificate register and no current sanction process under this mark
- Rainforest Alliance's own website returns no results for a site search on 'tourism' in English or 'turismo' in Spanish; the programme has been fully removed from its published material
- A tourism operator presenting this mark today is citing a programme Rainforest Alliance has not run since 2018, so the claim carries no live assurance whatever its historical basis
- The historical standard documents are no longer published by Rainforest Alliance, so the design of the retired programme cannot be read and should not be characterised in detail
- No public list survives of which properties or operators held the certification, or when their certificates lapsed
- The successor certification is a different scheme under a different owner; a Rainforest Alliance tourism claim is not evidence of holding the Preferred by Nature certification
- The green frog seal, which is what consumers recognise, is a Rainforest Alliance agricultural mark; its appearance in a travel context today should not be read as a current tourism assessment
The scheme
| Issued by | Formerly the Rainforest Alliance. RETIRED. Rainforest Alliance no longer operates a tourism certification. Management of its Sustainable Tourism Standards for Hotel and Lodging Services and for Inbound Tour Operators passed to Preferred by Nature, formerly NEPCon, on 1 October 2018. Preferred by Nature today issues its own Standard for Sustainable Travel Activities, which carries no Rainforest Alliance branding |
|---|---|
| Where it applies | Not applicable — retired. Historically concentrated in Latin America. The successor scheme, Preferred by Nature's Standard for Sustainable Travel Activities, is globally applicable |
| Audit and renewal | Not applicable — no certificates are issued under this mark. The successor scheme uses a three-year certificate with annual surveillance audits |
| Cost | Not applicable — retired |
What we read
None. No Rainforest Alliance tourism standard is currently published. Successor standard identified as Preferred by Nature Standard for Sustainable Travel Activities V1.1, published 20 March 2024
- Rainforest Alliance has no tourism content on its own site — Sorry, no content matched your criteria.
- same result on the Spanish site — No se encontraron resultados.
- current Rainforest Alliance certification scope is agriculture, no tourism — The Rainforest Alliance certification seal means that the product (or a specified ingredient) was produced by farmers, foresters, and/or companies working together to create a world where people and nature thrive in harmony.
- handover date and the two transferred standards — As of October 1, 2018, Preferred by Nature assumed management of the Rainforest Alliance Sustainable Tourism Standards for Hotel and Lodging Services and Inbound Tour Operators.
- successor standard, version and GSTC recognition — Standard for Sustainable Travel Activities V1.1 ... independently assessed and recognized as equivalent to the GSTC Industry Standard for Hotels and Tour Operators
- successor certificate validity and audit cycle — annual surveillance audits required within 60 days before each anniversary date; full reassessment audit at end of 3-year term for renewal
- Preferred by Nature achieved GSTC accreditation in May 2026 — Preferred by Nature achieves GSTC accreditation for its certification system for sustainable travel activities
- successor programme presents no Rainforest Alliance lineage — more than a decade of real-world implementation
What we could not establish
Confidence is high on the status finding and lower on the history. The status is established from primary sources: Rainforest Alliance's own site search returns no tourism content in English or Spanish, and its published certification scope is agricultural crops plus FSC forest management with no tourism category. The 1 October 2018 handover date and the names of the two transferred standards come from Wikipedia, a secondary source, and could not be confirmed against a primary Rainforest Alliance or Preferred by Nature announcement; Preferred by Nature's current travel pages and its January 2026 programme retrospective make no reference to Rainforest Alliance at all, though the retrospective's phrase 'more than a decade of real-world implementation' against a stated programme start of 2018 is consistent with an inherited predecessor. The handover date should be treated as reported rather than verified. Wikipedia also states that at handover certified tourism businesses could use the Rainforest Alliance green frog seal under Preferred by Nature's standards; nothing on Preferred by Nature's current travel pages or Rainforest Alliance's current marks material supports that arrangement still being in force, so it appears to have lapsed, but its formal termination could not be sourced. The historical programme's standard documents could not be retrieved — web.archive.org is not fetchable from this environment — so no characterisation of the retired standard's rigor, audit model or sanction history is offered. The three scores of 1 are status-driven and should be read as 'no live assurance', not as a finding about the historical scheme's quality.
If you hold this certification, it is already on your record. What a buyer cannot see there yet is the evidence behind the parts this standard does not reach.