Montréal leads the 2025 GDS index in North America

Tourisme Montréal ranks first in North America in the 2025 2024 Global Destination Sustainability Index, an internationally recognized body in sustainable tourism. Montréal has maintained its position in the top 40. The city was judged on nearly 70 criteria inspired by the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, classified into four main categories: environmental, social, supplier engagement, and destination management.

Why, exactly, is Montréal performing so strongly? It’s largely due to the impact of Tourisme Montréal’s Sustainable Destination strategy, which outlines tangible ways that to have a positive impact at destination, both socially and environmentally.

Ready to visit Montréal? Great! We can’t wait to greet you. Did you know we offer a tool to calculate a part of the carbon footprint of your entire visit to Montréal? We include the greenhouse gas emissions from your transportation, your meals, and your accommodations in the city. With this information, you’ll have the opportunity to offset this carbon footprint by making a donation to Carbone Boréal, a research infrastructure that plants trees and researches carbon sequestration. Your donation will make you an active participant in restoring the boreal forest and fighting climate change.

Offsetting is great. But if you want to deepen your commitment to sustainability, then we suggest to respect some key engagements. It was created to bring greater awareness to how we all have a duty to take care of our city, even if you are just passing through.

So, consider yourself not a tourist, but an “honorary local”, and Montréal your home away from home that you love as much as we do. By honouring these commitments, you will aim, whenever possible, to use reusable bottles, cups and bags, and to get around using active and public transportation, including walking, cycling, buses and the metro.

Montréal's well-known cultural scene includes several hotels, restaurants, and attractions. For instance, Espace pour la vie is Canada's largest nature and science museum complex, which includes the Biodôme, the Insectarium, the Botanical Garden, the Biosphere, and the Planetarium.