There has been increased attention given to sustainable tourism monitoring and evaluation efforts, including corporate policies, guidelines and codes of conduct as well as certification programs (e.g., Dodds and Joppe 2005; Font and Harris 2004; Holcomb, Upchurch and Okumus 2007). Few studies, however, have examined sustainable tourism awards programs as a source of innovation and learning. Significant financial and non-financial benefits accrue to organizations receiving industry awards. These advantages can include publicity, competitive market advantage, opportunity to benchmark and share good practice, improved employee morale, and higher shareholder value for publicly traded companies (Balasubramanian, Mathur and Thakur, 2005; Bohoris, 1995; Ghobadian and Woo, 1994; Jenkins, 2006). While these benefits are moderated by award quality and level of consumer recognition (Dodds and Joppe, 2005), it is suggested that awards can also serve as an incentive to spur innovation and encourage positive societal contributions. In this paper, an analysis of award-winning commerce-based tourism practices was performed to identify and categorize the contributions made to sustainable tourism, providing an inductive approach to observe how responsible tourism practices are associated with sustainable tourism principles.