Governance & Policies
The structural safeguards that make ASF Tourism’s verification worth trusting — independence from the facilities it checks, how conflicts of interest are declared and managed, what happens to the evidence a facility shares, and how a facility or guest can formally challenge a decision. Published openly, the same way the standard itself is.
These thirteen policies are adapted directly from ASF’s existing institutional Governance & Policy Manual (ASF-POL-17 through 53, already in force for ASF’s healthcare accreditation work) — same structure, same underlying principles, reworded for a tourism and hospitality context. ASF Tourism runs as its own governed instance of that structure, with its own Tourism Board, its own decision chain, and its own policy set below — not a reference back to ASF’s healthcare governance. Grounded in ISQua’s own External Evaluation Association standards for standards-setting bodies, ISO/IEC 17065 (conformity assessment body impartiality), and the Guidelines International Network (GIN) conflict-of-interest framework.
Who must declare, what counts as a conflict, and how a declared conflict is reviewed and managed before any assessment decision is made.
The structural separation between the body that sets the standard and the body that decides who passes — and how ASF prevents commercial pressure from influencing a result.
What happens to evidence a facility uploads — photos, documents, staff records — who can see it, how long it’s kept, and a facility’s rights over its own data.
How a guest, a facility, or a third party raises a concern about an ASF-verified property, and what ASF commits to doing about it.
If a facility disagrees with an assessment finding, the formal, structured path to challenge it — distinct from a complaint about conduct.
ASF Tourism’s own Tourism Board — a separate, parallel body to ASF’s healthcare Council — and the legal footing it operates under.
The decision chain from Monitor sign-off to a written accreditation outcome, validity and withdrawal, and how the accreditation mark itself is protected.
What every Tourism Board member, Surveyor, Coordinator, and Monitor signs and is held to — and what happens on a confirmed breach.
What a facility is told before it starts, how a Surveyor or Monitor is assigned, and how a facility checks the record before a decision is final.
How a Surveyor or Monitor conducts themselves around guests during a facility visit, and how a safeguarding concern is reported and handled.
Zero tolerance for fraud, bribery, and corruption by anyone acting for ASF Tourism, how it’s actually prevented through structure, and how it’s reported.
The risks ASF Tourism tracks as a new, growing programme, and how it keeps functioning through disruption to a facility’s assessment cycle.
What’s published openly and kept current — the Standard, this policy set, honest partnership status, and the planned accredited-facilities register.
Honest scope note: ASF Tourism runs as a complete, self-contained governance set — thirteen policies covering everything that changes how a facility, a guest, or a complaint is actually handled: independence and conflict of interest, how decisions are made and challenged, conduct and safeguarding during a facility visit, fraud prevention, risk, and transparency. ASF’s full institutional manual runs to 37 policies (ASF-POL-17–53); the remaining ones are internal-administration policies — donor reporting, staff HR process, internal financial controls, and similar — that genuinely don’t change how ASF Tourism’s verification works for a facility or a traveller, so they aren’t duplicated here. If that ever changes, this page will say so.