The results are in for the latest round of Responsible Tourism Awards, and New Zealand was the year’s big winner.

NZ took the overall prize because, as the judges wrote, the country consistently proves “that it is possible to develop a national strategy which uses tourism to help make better places to live and to visit.” Amen to that.

New Zealand also won Best Destination, because of its track record of “identifying and then attracting those tourists who contribute most to the economy, focussing on yield rather than merely on numbers of arrivals, spreading the benefits of tourism and fully integrating environmental issues into its quality standard.”

Sounds like an approach the world could use more of, huh?

You can see the full list of winners here.

Photo by Chris Gin (Creative Commons)