To promote personal responsibility and encourage sustainable actions, a bold, permanent new entry visa process was created. All arriving visitors MUST now sign a pledge, stamped in their passports, to be good environmental stewards.

This mandatory agreement, dedicated to Palau’s children, needs to be signed before an officer. Visitors are required to read and sign the agreement in front of the officer to gain entry.

The agency worked with government, industry, airlines, and citizens to change immigration laws and customs processes. The Pledge was issued in English, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

A range of brand elements, including passport brochure, airport posters, signage around the island, and a website, formed a comprehensive informational ecosystem, ensuring the Pledge was fully accessible to all.

In Palau, a business accreditation system was developed and education programs created to empower tourism businesses and residents.

The Palau Government passed a new law on December 6, 2017, directing immigration officials to use the Palau Pledge entry visa stamp.

The agency worked with the client (the Palau Legacy Project, a sustainable tourism marketing body), the government, the tourism industry and citizens to implement the new policy.

• Immigration law, customs processes were changed permanently

• The Pledge was issued in English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean

• Visitors required to watch an inflight film shown on all inbound flights

• Business accreditation program created to empower tourism businesses/ residents

• New curriculum for primary/ secondary school students and other training programs to help build eco-awareness and conscious business principles within the tourist sector

• Locals/ tour operators encouraged to take Pledge

• Multi-language passport brochure/ airport posters/ website/ signage around Palau/ social influencer activity

Launched at the UN, the Pledge garnered enormous coverage for Palau’s conservation efforts. Its social, cultural, and political impact is local and global:

• Over 2 million tourists will sign Pledge within first 10 years

• In first weeks of launch, Pledge achieved 1.7 billion earned media impressions (for $0 spend)

• Pledge endorsed by global organisations/ leaders in politics, conservation, and tourism, including UN, World Economic Forum, Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund, Conservation International, Leonardo DiCaprio, John Kerry (Former US Secretary of State)

• The first country to incorporate environmental practices into its immigration laws

While Palau is a small nation, its efforts to mitigate mass tourism’s effects can be seen on a global scale. Already nations including New Zealand have expressed interest in creating their own Pledge. By taking steps to sustainably manage its tourist population, Palau hopes other countries will take action to protect their environment.

The Palau Pledge is a 360-degree brand experience built around a central, pioneering tourism activation: All international arrivals to Palau now have an environmental pledge stamped into their passports, which they MUST sign before an immigration officer at the airport to gain entry. The Palau Pledge is a permanent new entry visa process for Palau, combating the ecological damage caused by booming tourist numbers. The tourism experience was redesigned around the Pledge, with touch-points educating and empowering tourists, locals, and tourism businesses. Palau is the first country to incorporate an environmental commitment into its immigration laws.

The agency created the Palau Pledge activation in response to the client’s brief: to promote ecologically responsible behaviour amongst tourists and locals, ensuring enforcement and encouragement is seen to be everyone’s job.

The Pledge itself is a commitment device rooted in behavioural economics. By making a person agree to a small, public request to sign the Pledge, it creates a strong internal desire to behave consistently.

Palau can also take legal action against visitors who violate the strict environmental laws underpinning the Pledge – including fining offenders up to USD 1 million.

The Palau Pledge visa stamp unifies action to protect Palau’s environment. It is the central activation around a redesigned tourism experience (which includes: passport insert; inflight film on all inbound flights; website; signage; business accreditation; and education programs for citizens), showing tourists and locals their role in protecting Palau.

The Republic of Palau, a Western Pacific island-nation, has seen a massive growth in tourist numbers, particularly in the past three years.

The Palau Legacy Project, a tourism marketing body that works alongside the government, recognised that without action, it would be too late to protect some of the most unique parts of the country, such as the UNESCO World Heritage listed Rock Islands.

The challenge: find a balance between encouraging tourism without compromising the environment.

However, the costs of environmentally wasteful, destructive behaviour are often difficult to feel on an individual level. Those costs are not the result of any one person’s careless actions but of aggregate actions, over time.

This makes it difficult for people to understand the value of making an effort towards conservation.

The objective: partner with government, Palauans, and the tourist industry to model and promote sustainable attitudes and behaviour among tourists and locals.