Destination d'Excellence label: the sobriety test of your website, what it measures and where to start

The Destination d'Excellence label asks tourist offices for an attestation from their supplier on the website's digital sobriety, that is, on how few resources it consumes (criterion 138). A note from Atout France 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 ranks the page against the other pages measured, from three quantities recorded as the page loads: it does not measure 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.

Destination d'Excellence label and digital sobriety: two definitions

What is the Destination d'Excellence label, and what does digital sobriety mean? Since the decree (arrêté) of 18 April 2024, tourism professionals in France can obtain a national label, Destination d'Excellence, whose rules Atout France publishes. Its purpose is twofold: the quality of welcome and services, and high standards in sustainable development and environmental protection. A tourist office obtains it for five years, after an assessment against a list of criteria. One of them concerns digital sobriety. For ADEME, the French public agency for ecological transition, it "consists in questioning the need for and the use of digital services" (skills framework, 2024; quotations in this guide are my translations from the French). In other words: ask whether a service is needed before making it lighter. The label keeps a narrow version of it: "optimised visuals", that is, lighter photos, short videos and compressed files. This guide lies in the gap between these meanings: the label talks about images, and the tool that grades your website measures something else.

ecoindex.fr sobriety grade: a letter from A to G, three quantities measured

What does the sobriety grade that the Destination d'Excellence label can give your website measure? The grade is a letter from A to G, like the energy rating of a home. An online service open to all, ecoindex.fr, gives it to a single page: for the label, your home page. The service's "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, weighted 3, 2 and 1 in that order: the number of elements that make up the page, the number of files requested from the server and the weight of the data transferred. From these the service derives a score out of 100 and a letter.

This letter is a rank, not a threshold. The service computes it "against the other values in the EcoIndex database". It speaks of "a performance relative to the sample studied" and asks users to "compare like with like". Its authors also state what the measurement leaves aside. 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".

Criterion 138 of the label is about something other than these three quantities: it is about visuals. 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). Making photos lighter, shortening videos and compressing files acts on the weight of the data transferred. That is the quantity that counts least. The number of elements and the number of files count most. They depend on how the page is built: page templates, extensions, downloaded fonts, audience measurement tools, sliding image banners. Well-compressed photos therefore do not prevent a poor letter. An attestation that talks about visuals changes nothing in what the test measures.

Destination d'Excellence label: offices concerned and the deadline of 31 December 2026

Is your office concerned by the sobriety test of the Destination d'Excellence label, and by when? It is if it is a candidate for or a holder of this label and its eco-responsible pillar is assessed. The label scores two pillars separately, that is, two sets of criteria: quality, which covers welcome and services, and eco-responsibility. The website's sobriety falls under the second. The decree that governs the label was in force without amendment on 26 September 2026. The label is extended if a new assessment is started before the five years expire (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, where the assessor comes as a visitor. The office then has one month to send any missing supporting documents, and the assessment body may encourage it to send them before the visit. Atout France publishes a clarification note, a question-and-answer document that clarifies the assessment grid, that is, the list of the label's criteria. In its April 2026 version, question 16 states that it is possible to test the home page. The text proposes the test. It does not say that every assessor runs it, nor that they send the result, nor when.

If your office holds the Qualité Tourisme mark, the deadline is fixed by the decree. It limits the validity of the mark to 31 December 2026 at the latest. It 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, and 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.

One case only exempts the office from this assessment: if it is recognised by a third-party label on Atout France's list, it is exempt from checks on the eco-responsible 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 four labels, the assessment lies ahead of you, and your measurement can come before it.

Sobriety test of the home page: four steps in one hour

How can you find out your website's sobriety grade, in an hour and on your own? Four steps are enough, 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 displayed, the date and the time. This is the test that Atout France's 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 website. Run two an hour apart: content coming from other websites or the banner that asks for the visitor's consent may, I assume, make the result vary.

Second step, half an hour: read in the public assessment grid, the list of the label's criteria, those that concern the website. The table below keeps four, which judge the website itself. Others only ask for a piece of information to appear on it, such as criterion 112.

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 and 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. A good letter on the home page says nothing about the other pages.

Criterion 138 of the label: a coefficient of 1 in 112 and an attestation to date

What does it cost to leave your website's sobriety grade as it is? In the label's scoring it costs little, and it can be said in figures. Criterion 138 counts with a coefficient of 1 in the score, and it is not mandatory. No criterion of the eco-responsible pillar is: the mandatory criteria concern 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. It is passed at 60% for a first labelling and at 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: the calculation formula is not written down. This criterion alone makes an office miss the threshold only if it is already very close to 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, that is, a trial assessment, 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. The clarification note says that the director's sworn statement "is authoritative". It says nothing about the supplier's. I deduce, with no text that says so, that an attestation contradicted by a letter may weaken the file when it is read. The dated measurement, attached to the attestation, makes the attestation readable.

Who reads the letter first

The criterion weighs 1 in 112. The mechanism it reveals weighs more. Someone you answer to can measure your website with a public tool and a published method, and the label's texts say so. 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, then 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 among the other pages measured. The label's criterion asks for optimised visuals, not for a letter.

In four cases, you need no outside intervention. One, your office is neither a candidate for nor a holder of this label, or 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. Two, 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. Three, your supplier already measures before each assessment and attaches the measurement. You will see it in your file: keep that supplier. Four, your website comes from a shared platform whose page 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. It measures before and after the three quantities the grade takes into account, fixes what carries weight and provides 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 sobriety is the only issue. Its price is set out in the written note that follows the first call.