Our commitments Eco-design declaration

The Val d’Isère Tourist Office is committed to an eco-design approach for its website www.valdisere.com, with a view to reducing its environmental impact.

As part of this, the communications department has appointed a designated representative who has been made aware of the challenges of responsible digital technology: Violette Staehle – Position filled.

In order to carry out an initial assessment and identify areas for improvement, an audit was conducted in April 2023, revealing that the website was partially compliant with theGeneral Eco-design Reference Framework for Digital Services (RGESN) – Version 1 dated 28 November 2022.

Purpose of this website

This website aims to bring together all the information and resources that enable anyone to discover Val d’Isère as a tourist destination and plan their holiday. It also aims to promote the area’s appeal and its commitment to eco-responsible practices for sustainable tourism. Finally, this website aims to promote local businesses, and to help and support them in developing their tourism activities.

The identification of users of this website was the subject of UX research right from the initial design stage. Real needs and expectations are being analysed, and the Val d’Isère Tourist Office website is being updated to remove features or content that are rarely used, poorly understood and/or offer little value.

The service’s target users are primarily French and international tourists wishing to discover Val d’Isère and plan their stay, but also locals and holidaymakers already in the area looking for up-to-date information (slope openings in winter, activities to do, events to attend, places to visit, restaurants, etc.).

Sustainable Development Goals

By facilitating access to information and promoting tourism in its area, the Val d’Isère Tourist Office contributes to the following Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs):

SDG 8: Decent work and economic growth, in particular:

• 8.9: By 2030, formulate and implement policies to develop sustainable tourism that creates jobs and showcases local culture and products

SDG 11: Sustainable cities and communities, in particular:

• 11.4: Strengthen efforts to protect and preserve the world’s cultural and natural heritage
• 11.7: By 2030, ensure access for all, in particular women and children, older people and people with disabilities, to green spaces and safe public spaces
• 11.a: Foster positive economic, social and environmental linkages between urban, peri-urban and rural areas by strengthening development planning at national and regional levels

SDG 12: Sustainable consumption and production, in particular:

• 12.2: By 2030, achieve the sustainable management and rational use of natural resources
• 12.b: Develop and use tools to monitor impacts on sustainable development, to promote sustainable tourism that creates jobs and showcases local culture and products

SDG 13: Climate action, in particular:

• 13.3: Improve education, awareness and individual and institutional capacity regarding climate change adaptation, mitigation and the reduction of its impacts, as well as early warning systems

SDG 15: Life on Land, in particular:

• 15.1: By 2030, ensure the conservation, restoration and sustainable use of terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems and their associated services, in particular forests, wetlands, mountains and arid lands, in accordance with obligations under international agreements
• 15.4: By 2030, ensure the conservation of mountain ecosystems, including their biodiversity, in order to better harness their essential benefits for sustainable development

Strategy implemented and objectives regarding the reduction or mitigation of environmental impacts

The main challenge is to ensure that this website works on the oldest possible devices and under a variety of connectivity conditions:

• Work on the user experience (UX) by offering different ways to access content: via ‘Our suggestions’ or via ‘What you’re looking for’ (by theme)
• Navigation that is as intuitive as possible to minimise the time spent finding information
• All content is accessible on mobile devices as a minimum. The website adapts to all screen sizes
• Maximum compression of images and videos
• Provision of a text alternative for videos
• Manual removal of obsolete content: news, calendar entries, etc.

Given the specific nature of tourist destination websites, which must be at least somewhat appealing and immersive to inspire interest, it is difficult, if not impossible, for the Val d’Isère Tourist Office to restrict itself to a maximum number of server requests and a maximum resource load per screen that is within reasonable limits.

However, every effort has been made, in collaboration with the web agency that developed the website www.valdisere.com, to find the best balance between appeal, performance and environmental impact.

Supported device profiles

The Val d’Isère Tourist Office uses the most standardised mechanisms possible. All desktop and mobile browsers must be supported. Consequently, the Val d’Isère Tourist Office website is compatible with any device capable of running a compatible web browser:

• PC with a Pentium 4 processor or higher, minimum 2 GB of RAM for Windows (minimum requirement for Firefox and Chrome)
• Mac compatible with macOS X High Sierra or later (Mac hardware from 2009 or later)
• Mobile device running Android 6.0 or later (mobile devices from 2015 or later)
• Mobile device running iOS 10.3 or later (devices from 2012 or later)

In particular, the service has been successfully tested (in real-world conditions or via emulation) on:

• Operating systems: Windows 7 and later, macOS X High Sierra and later, Linux
• Browsers: Chrome/Chromium, Firefox (latest version or ESR), Edge, Opera, Safari 11 or later

The product therefore ensures that the display is optimised for different resolutions:

• All users accessing the service: smartphones with a minimum resolution of 360 x 800, tablets and computers
• Offer provider: tablet (minimum 800 x 1080) or computer (minimum 1366 x 768)

Identified improvements

• Ensure that the website displays correctly on small and/or older-generation mobile devices (criterion 1.6)
• Be aware of and take into account the environmental impacts of off-the-shelf interface components and third-party services when selecting them (criteria 2.4 and 2.5)
• Seek to optimise the accessibility and usability of the site for users on low-bandwidth connections (criterion 4.1)
• Allow users to decide whether to activate a third-party service and to control the display of certain content, such as media (criteria 4.5 and 4.19)
• Limit server requests when users enter data (criterion 4.11)
• Seek to limit the number of domains accessed (criterion 6.11)
• Have a clear procedure regarding the retention periods for data and documents where required, as well as their archiving and/or deletion once their retention period has expired (criteria 7.3 and 7.4)