Chairman of ECOTRANS, Germany. He has been working since 20 years in the field environ-mentally sustainable tourism development in Europe. In 1993 he founded and since then has chaired the European network for sustainable tourism development ECOTRANS. His special knowledge and expertise is on the development, monitoring, research, networking and dis-semination of voluntary initiatives and best practice examples (www.eco-tip.org) for environ-mentally friendly, socially compatible and economically sound tourism, with a special focus on about 100 eco-labels, awards and self committed initiatives world wide.