If you run a hotel chain or a group of companies of any kind, whether national or international, you're probably wondering:
Spoiler: Yes, it's possible. And simpler than you might think.
With Biosphere you can comprehensively manage the assessment of the sustainability actions of each of your business units centrally, with verified evidence for each action that you can communicate in real time from a single, 100% online platform, in accordance with the Biosphere Scheme. Each business unit maintains its own profile, scope and certification process. With our platform, you’ll be able to organise sustainability initiatives, provide evidence and check the status of each process using simple, intuitive global dashboards.
The corporate management features are available by taking out our certification service for 5 or more business units. Request more information
Define common criteria for your group and easily adapt them to each unit.
Upload corporate documents just once and reuse them across your entities.
Work with as many people and teams as you need, with no restrictions.
Access indicators, evidence, and progress of all your business units from a centralised virtual dashboard.
API connection with online travel agencies (OTAs) such as Booking.com to showcase your business units’ current certificates.
Choose actions across the units within your group and track their progress:assigned ➝ evidenced ➝ verified.
Create a profile for a first business unit. Develop its sustainability plan by assigning and documenting activities that you know are also carried out by the other units in your group. Quickly identify the level of compliance across all your units.
Sign up for free, with no obligation. Define the entity's basic details and choose its type. Access with this profile and at no cost the "Starters" of the Biosphere Scheme: basic sustainability initiatives designed for the type of company selected during registration.
Work on at least one activity from each Starter and upload the evidence that shows it is already being carried out in that entity (a photo, invoice, video…). The platform will help you easily identify the documents you need to provide to demonstrate each effort.
For €359 a year, you can request a third-party audit for Biosphere Committed level — the entry one of the Biosphere Scheme. To receive this service, you must have demonstrated compliance with the minimum requirements for this level by documenting at least one activity for each Starter.
In the Biosphere Scheme, the levels are cumulative. At the Committed level, you gain access to a wider range of actions that you can have verified. With a new audit, included at no extra cost, you will be able to report each of the verified actions on your profile, thereby unlocking the Biosphere Certified level.
Use the corporate functions to reuse common documentation, replicate procedures where applicable, and facilitate the management of other profiles within the group. Each business unit maintains its own profile, information, evidence, status and certification process.
By taking out our certification services for 5 or more entities as a corporate group, you will have access to a corporate dashboard with an integral view, and you'll be able to enjoy incredible discounts! Each business unit must have its own profile and individually complete the applicable assessment or certification process. Corporate management allows you to coordinate profiles from a centralised dashboard, without this implying a single certification for the group.
With our annual fees, you receive our certification services with no surprises, no additional costs and no in-person visits.
✔️ Certification service available worldwide and in up to 7 languages
✔️ Annual 100% online audits included in the fee
✔️ OTA integrations for visibility on portals
The financial terms, discounts and services included depend on the number of entities, the scope contracted and the current terms of the certification service.
And if any of the entities in your group is located in a Destination with Biosphere certification, remember that some of these destination management bodies may have programmes with discounts or special terms for companies located in their territory. The availability, scope and percentage of this discount depend on the terms provided by the competent manager offering it. Check the available programmes
No. The Biosphere Scheme of the Responsible Tourism Institute (RTI) does not provide for the certification of a corporate profile: the certificate is issued per entity or business unit, never as a single certification for an entire group or chain.
Each hotel, restaurant or establishment must create its own profile, subscribe individually and pass its own annual external audit process, 100 % online, to obtain its own certificate. Only this way is it guaranteed that the verified sustainability actions genuinely correspond to what each unit actually does, rather than assuming that an entire group complies because part of it does.
That said, if your entity is part of a chain or a group, the Biosphere Sustainable platform —Biosphere Responsible Tourism's working tool throughout the whole certification process— is indeed designed to facilitate that joint management. This platform offers a corporate dashboard from which to view and monitor the progress of all the group's business units that are working through their certification processes with Biosphere Responsible Tourism. The platform allows you to define corporate protocols or plans that each unit can then adopt as shared evidence, and gives unlimited access, at no extra cost, to as many users as you need. These corporate features are solely for document management during the certification process; the certificate itself always remains individual, per entity.
As a chain or group, management can be carried out using corporate group functionalities, but the certificate will always be individual for each entity. When working on your certification with Biosphere Responsible Tourism, you have a series of functionalities designed specifically for corporate management: our Biosphere Sustainable platform offers an intuitive, centralised control panel from which to view the progress and indicators of all your entities at once, the ability to define a common corporate sustainability plan that is then applied and adapted to each business unit, multiple-upload tools for evidence to speed up work across several individual profiles simultaneously, and unlimited access at no additional cost for as many users as you need.
It is precisely this layer of joint management that tends to raise the question of whether, at some point in the process, the group itself becomes certified. And the answer is no: the unit that is certified remains, in every case, the individual entity. This is not a limitation of the platform, but a consequence of how any third-party certification process works: the evidence that is audited — policies, agreements, photographs — belongs to the actual operations of a specific entity, and it is on that demonstrable reality that the certificate is issued. That is why each entity creates its own profile, works on its own sustainability plan and obtains, independently of the rest, its own certificate. There is no such thing, and none can be set up, as a single corporate profile replacing the individual profiles: if one is created, it is removed without prior notice, with the consequent loss of all associated information.
As a certification body, at Biosphere Responsible Tourism (BRT) we cannot offer you consultancy support or take part in designing or preparing your entity's documentation — for example, telling you whether one of your documents is valid to demonstrate a requirement, or whether one of your actions is well conceived and carried out for the purposes of the assessment — whatever the scheme under which you are certified with us.
BRT is the body that carries out the compliance assessment and that decides on the granting, renewal or withdrawal of the certificate, which is the service you would be contracting; compromising that independence would go against the impartiality that the ISO/IEC 17065 standard requires of certification bodies.
The support we can genuinely offer you within our certification services is limited to explaining how our working tools function (the Biosphere Sustainable platform and repository) and the various steps of the certification process with our body. Likewise, we can provide you with assistance for any problem you may encounter with our services and tools through our customer service, complaints and appeals channels.
In the specific case of the certification process with BRT under the Biosphere Scheme — for the time being, the only one we offer — you will not need any additional help to complete the process: our Biosphere Sustainable platform is designed so that you can work through it independently. In it, you will find an explanation of each requirement as set out by the scheme, clear guidance on what documentation is valid to evidence each sustainability action, and all the information relating to the audit steps, the audit reports and the uploading of documents.
Creating your profile on the platform is free: only when you decide to move forward with the assessment of the documentation provided by your entity do you need to take out our certification services. The amount is €359 per entity, to have the assessment services covered for 365 days, for the certification scheme and scope contracted, including the corresponding annual assessment or audit in accordance with the terms of the service. This fee covers the audit services you need for your entity's profile under the Biosphere Scheme, to receive the compliance assessment at the Committed level and at the Certified level of this certification process. This service has a limit of one audit per level and one remediation per level, within the contracted period. These attempts allow you to correct or complete the requested information and resubmit the profile for review.
To find out the requirements and levels of the Biosphere Scheme, go to the website of the Institute for Responsible Tourism (ITR): www.responsibletourisminstitute.com.