In response to the disbandment of the Japan Ecolodge Association, the GSTC recognized standard, Environmentally Sustainable Accommodations International Standard (ESAIS), has transferred all its rights to Asian Ecotourism Network (AEN) as the end of year 2017. The revision of the original standard took place within AEN to reflect 1) the changes made to comply with the updated GSTC Industry Criteria and 2) the Asian ecotourism contexts and deleted the Japanese contexts that were not relevant for other Asian countries. The shaded criteria comply with the GSTC-HTO standard. The adoption of the standard will help the nature-based lodges to achieve SDGs and collect relevant evidences.

​Rules to meet the standard: All criteria are encouraged to be used for all nature-based lodges and resorts regardless of the size. It can be used as a checklist. Depending on the country or geographical setting, some criteria are difficult to apply thus they are made as optional criteria. We will be setting the rules for ones that satisfy our standard in the form of recognition and/or awards with an opportunity for annual internal and periodic third party auditing. The details will be made available here on the website.