About Vakinn

Vakinn is a quality and environmental certification for tourism in Iceland that has been available since 2012. The Icelandic Tourist Board oversees Vakinn, and the quality and environmental criteria have been developed in close collaboration with stakeholders in the industry. The Icelandic Tourist Board has agreements with three inspection and certification bodies that handle the audits.

Vakinn was originally modeled on Qualmark, but significant effort has been put into localizing and adapting the system to Icelandic conditions. This has involved collaboration with numerous tourism professionals and experts in various fields, in the beginning and throughout the years, especially during periodic revisions of the criteria.

"The goal of Vakinn is to enhance quality, safety, and environmental awareness in Icelandic tourism while promoting corporate social responsibility among tourism companies.

Quality and Environmental Criteria

The criteria of Vakinn provide guidance and include various tools that can be used to improve business practices. In developing criteria for specific types of activities, the process was guided by ISO standards for adventure tourism as well as criteria from the Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA). Additionally, the criteria were guided by the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) standards for sustainable tourism. Vakinn also serves as a tool for advancing sustainability, partly through a checklist accompanying the criteria, titled On the way to Sustainable Tourism.

Vakinn's quality criteria for hotels are guided by the European Hotelstars system, led by the Hotrec organization. Criteria for other accommodation categories were initially guided by Qualmark, New Zealand’s quality and environmental system for tourism, but have been adapted to Icelandic conditions.

Certified companies must meet a wide range of criteria concerning quality, safety, environmental management, and sustainability. The certification provides tourism companies with guidance and motivation to maintain high quality standards and demonstrate responsibility toward the environment and society.

     In the development of the quality and environmental criteria, guidance has been drawn from ISO standards, Hotelstars.eu guidelines, as well as standards from ATTA and GSTC.

United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

Many elements of Vakinn’s quality and environmental criteria, as well as the Towards Sustainable Tourism checklist, reflect the goals outlined in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG´s).

The Vakinn team at the Icelandic Tourist Board

Alda Þrastardóttir Áslaug Briem Elías Gíslason
Alda Þrastardóttir
Project manager
alda[at]ferdamalastofa.is    
Áslaug Briem 
Project manager
aslaug[at]ferdamalastofa.is    
Elías Bj. Gíslason
Director
elias[at]ferdamalastofa.is     

Appeals Committee

At the Icelandic Tourist Board, there is an appeals committee responsible for taking positions on issues and resolving disputes that may arise in connection with inspections between applicants/participants in Vakinn and the inspectors or certification bodies.

If you need to submit comments or a complaint regarding certified companies, you can send them to the email address vakinn@vakinn.is, but the relevant certification body generally handles such complaints involving the ITB.

Appreciation of Contribution

The Icelandic Tourist Board wants to express their gratitude and appreciation towards all those tourism industry specialists who contributed to the compilation of the Vakinn criteria.