World Heritage Alliance for Sustainable Tourism
In late 2005, Expedia, Inc and the United Nations Foundation established a membership-based initiative called the World Heritage Alliance (WHA) with the mission of promoting and protecting World Heritage sites through sustainable tourism.   The World Heritage Alliance works to:

•  Support local community tourism initiatives at World Heritage sites as an important means of site conservation and sustainable development;

•  Educate travelers on responsible tourism in and around World Heritage sites; and

•  Engage tourism companies – principally through Expedia's suppliers and partners – to adhere to sustainable business practices, especially around World Heritage sites.

The World Heritage Alliance and its partners expanded into the caribbean basin, and specifically begin the process of fulfilling the WHA's objectives in the island of Dominica, the most biodiverse island of the Eastern Caribbean and home to the Morne Trois Pitons natural World Heritage site.

Responding to needs and opportunities articulated by national and local stakeholders in Dominica from the private sector, government and civil society, the WHA program for Dominica addressed two key objectives:

•  Build capacity at a national level for Dominica to transform its tourism-related businesses, especially in the lodging sector, into leaders in sustainable tourism and aid in marketing the destination as a sustainable destination; and

•  Build complementary capacity at a local level, and in particular in the southeast region of the island, for local community groups to develop and market the sustainable tourism assets as an important means of local development and conservation of the adjacent World Heritage site.

These objectives were fulfilled by two synergistically developed and simultaneous programs, all under the umbrella of the World Heritage Alliance.   To address the local capacity, the WHA utlized the Expedia Employee Volunteer Program, which matched Expedia employees – experts in their respective fields – with the Southeast Tourism Development Committee (SETDC), a local civil society group in the southeast region of Dominica, to help SETDC improve and market its sustainable and community-based tourism products.

To address the national capacity, Solimar International, a member of the World Heritage Alliance, with support from USAID worked together with Discover Dominica, the division of the National Development Corporation for Dominica that focuses on tourism, and with the Dominica Hotel and Tourism Association (DHTA) and the Eco-Inns Sites and Services Association (ESSA) to implement a series of trainings and consultations on how to mainstream sustainable tourism and international quality standards within the Dominica tourism industry, and how to improve marketing strategies for Dominica to better benefit from tourism as an engine for economic development.