Your label can test your website's environmental footprint: what the grade measures, and where to start
The Destination d'Excellence label's assessment grid for tourist offices asks, under criterion 138, for an attestation from the website's supplier on digital sobriety. Its clarification note adds that the home page can be tested on a public tool, ecoindex.fr, and reads the resulting letter, from A to G, on four levels. This letter is a relative rank, computed from three quantities measured as the page loads, not a measure of the effort put into the website. What is up to you: run this measurement before the assessment, date it, and send no attestation without it.
The sobriety grade the label can give your website: what does it measure?
The grade is a letter from A to G, like the energy rating of a home. It is given by an online service open to all, ecoindex.fr, to a single page: for the label, your home page. Its "Comment ça marche ?" page ("How it works") describes the method: the home page is opened in a browser that has kept nothing in memory; the service waits three seconds, scrolls it to the bottom, then waits another three seconds. It then counts three quantities, the number of elements that make up the page, the number of files requested from the server and the weight of the data transferred, weighted 3, 2 and 1 in that order. From these it derives a score out of 100 and a letter.
This letter is not a threshold. The service computes it "against the other values in the EcoIndex database", speaks of "a performance relative to the sample studied" and asks users to "compare like with like" (quotations in this guide are my translations from the French). Its authors also state what the measurement does not say: the service "gives no information on the efforts made in terms of eco-design", it "measures instantaneous environmental performance", "like a speed camera", and its figures "are orders of magnitude".
The label's criterion is about something else. The website "follows the principles of digital sobriety through optimised visuals: reduced photo weight, short videos, compressed files, etc." (Atout France tourist office assessment grid, document of 27 March 2025). What the criterion names, lighter photos, shorter videos, compressed files, acts on the weight of the data transferred, the quantity that counts least. The number of elements and the number of files, which count most, depend on how the page is built: templates, extensions, downloaded fonts, audience measurement scripts, carousels. Well-compressed photos therefore do not prevent a poor letter, and an attestation that talks about visuals changes nothing in what the speed camera sees. What is up to you is to know this letter before others do. Anyone can measure it in a few minutes: if you read it first, you have time to fix or explain; if someone else reads it before you, the assessor for instance, you may discover it when your file is examined. It remains to be seen which offices will have this criterion assessed, and when.
Is your office concerned, and by when?
You are concerned if your office is a candidate for or a holder of the Destination d'Excellence label and its eco-responsible pillar is assessed. The label scores two pillars separately, welcome and services on one side, eco-responsibility on the other; the website's sobriety falls under the second. It is governed by the decree (arrêté) of 18 April 2024, in force without amendment on 26 September 2026. It runs for five years and is extended if a new assessment is started before it expires (article 7).
The date that matters is the date of your assessment. The label's methodological guide, in its March 2026 version, describes a mystery-shopper visit, then one month to send any missing supporting documents, which the assessment body may also encourage you to send before the visit. Atout France also publishes a clarification note, a question-and-answer document that clarifies the assessment grid. In its April 2026 version, question 16 states that it is possible to test the home page. The text therefore proposes the test; it does not say that every assessor runs it, nor that they send the result, nor when.
If your office still holds the Qualité Tourisme mark, the deadline is fixed. The decree limits its validity to 31 December 2026 at the latest and treats the move to Destination d'Excellence as a first labelling, not a renewal. For this move, the Qualité Tourisme mark stands in for the quality pillar: the office does not have to be assessed on it again. Atout France calls this arrangement a bridge ("passerelle") and keeps it open until 31 December 2026. The eco-responsible pillar, however, still has to be passed, at a threshold of 60%. The label obtained this way is valid only for the time the mark had left, so until 31 December 2026 at the latest; to keep it beyond that, a new assessment is needed.
The office is exempt from it in one case only: if it is recognised by a third-party label on Atout France's list, it is exempt from checks on this pillar. For tourist offices, the March 2026 list has four labels: Normandie Qualité Tourisme Responsable, Green Destination, Flocon Vert, and Destination Innovante Durable for involved partners and pilot organisations.
Without one of these labels, the assessment lies ahead of you, with a deadline known in advance: your measurement can come before it. You can run this test this morning.
How can you find out where you stand, in an hour and on your own?
Four steps, in order. The first takes a few minutes: enter the address of your home page on ecoindex.fr, then note the letter, the three quantities, the date and the time. This is the test the clarification note points to, and the label reads the letter as follows: A or B, very satisfactory; C or D, satisfactory; E or F, unsatisfactory; G, very unsatisfactory (question 16). The service limits analyses to ten a day per domain name; run two an hour apart, because third-party content or a consent banner may, I assume, make the result vary.
Second step, half an hour: read, in the public assessment grid, the criteria that concern the website. The table keeps four that judge the website itself; others only ask for a piece of information to appear on it, such as criterion 112.
| Criterion | What it asks | How it is assessed | Coefficient |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | A careful, attractive and user-friendly presentation, readable on mobile | Not specified | 3 |
| 4 | A well-referenced website | A search engine query with keywords such as "what to do" and the town; validated if the website appears on the first page | 3 |
| 128 | Bonus: the principles of the French general framework for improving accessibility | Document check | None printed |
| 138 | Optimised visuals for digital sobriety | Attestation from the website's supplier; the home page may be tested | 1 |
Criterion 4 follows the same logic as 138: a public test you can run before the assessment.
Third step, an email: before sending a sobriety attestation, ask your supplier for their measurement of the three quantities, dated, attached. No attestation without a dated measurement; that sentence holds everything else together. Fourth step, if your letter is neither A nor B: ask the assessment body in writing which page it tests and when. The public text designates the home page; it does not set the timing. And a good letter on the home page says nothing about the other pages. That leaves the question a director asks first: what does doing nothing cost?
What does it cost to leave the grade as it is?
In the label's scoring, little, and it can be said in figures. Criterion 138 has a coefficient of 1 and is not mandatory; no criterion of the eco-responsible pillar is, the mandatory criteria concerning customer feedback and accessibility. This pillar is scored separately: its scored criteria, from 129 to 194 in the tourist office assessment grid, have coefficients that add up to 112, and it is passed at 60% for a first labelling, 80% at renewal (methodological guide, March 2026). Criterion 138 therefore weighs 1 in 112 if all the scored criteria apply to your office, a little more if some are marked "not applicable"; this is a deduction, as the calculation formula is not written down. On this calculation, this criterion alone only makes an office miss the threshold if it is already right at the edge of it; at renewal, at 80%, the margin narrows. Coutances Tourisme made public, in the minutes of its management committee of 15 December 2025, a mock audit at 64% on this pillar: four points above the threshold.
What remains at stake is the document. The label asks for an attestation from the supplier; its clarification note says that the director's sworn statement "is authoritative" and says nothing about the supplier's. What I deduce from this, with no text that says so: an attestation contradicted by a letter may weaken the file when it is read, and the dated measurement, attached, makes it readable. So what should you do with this letter?
What I think
The criterion is small; the mechanism is not. Someone you answer to can measure your website with a public tool and a published protocol, and the label's issuer says so in writing. What matters is knowing who reads the letter first. If it is not you, it may be the assessor, and your supplier may be the last to learn of it. The tool's authors are right against the use made of it: a speed camera measures a speed at one moment, it does not say how you drive. Do with the letter what it allows: know it, date it, attach it, fix what weighs in the three quantities, starting with what the page loads without anyone having decided it. Do not try to improve it for its own sake: it ranks your page against the other pages measured, and the label's criterion does not ask for a letter, it asks for optimised visuals.
In several cases, you need no outside intervention. If your office is neither a candidate for nor a holder of this label, or if its eco-responsible pillar is exempted by one of the four equivalent labels, you will see that no assessment applies, or that an equivalence was accepted: do nothing on this subject. If your home page comes out at A or B, you are "very satisfactory" on the label's grid: keep the dated measurement with the attestation. If your supplier already measures before each assessment and attaches the measurement, you will see it in your file: keep that supplier. If your website comes from a shared platform whose templates and extensions you do not control, the letter depends on that platform, and that is who you should call. The indicator has its limits, one page, one rank, one moment; when it is not conclusive, the written question to the assessment body is the check that remains.
If you are in the situation where your label's auditor tested your website, the grade is poor, and a supporting document is due by a set date, the architecture diagnostic is what answers it. The three quantities the grade takes into account, measured before and after, fixes to what carries weight, and the requested document, attached to the measurement. After that, you rerun the label's test yourself before each assessment. This part can be ordered on its own when the environmental footprint is the only issue; its price is set out in the written note that follows the first call.