Cosmos and Avalon Waterways’ Giles Hawke says making positive steps doesn’t need to be rocket science
Sustainability? It doesn’t need to be rocket science. I am in the fortunate position of being global sustainability lead for the Globus family of brands and have been involved in this since 2018 when we started to address sustainability seriously.
In that time we have accomplished huge amounts and created our Lighthouse Project, which encompasses all of our activity under one umbrella to help our staff, agents and customers better understand the breadth and depth of what we are doing.
I have questioned a number of times over the past four years whether I am the right person to be leading this. I don’t have official training in this area; I have another full-time job in leading our UK business; and it has been extremely challenging at times to keep track of everything and ensure we are really making a difference.
I have looked at all the different third-party organisations which offer to help measure your impact, and the programmes that exist to validate your actions, along with what our competitors are doing and what is happening in wider society.
Having done all this, I have come to the conclusion that, for the vast majority of businesses, we can achieve massive leaps in our sustainability programmes without the need to overcomplicate things.
Common sense
Sustainability isn’t just about carbon – although that it is an important part of it – but about the people and the places we visit as well.
For businesses that don’t have the budgets to employ dedicated sustainability people and outside consultants to measure and manage everything, endeavours to do the right thing shouldn’t be frowned upon.
Common sense is a great starting point for any sustainability programme. Can we reduce our emissions through simple actions? Can we work with our business partners to jointly help improve the lives of people in the places we visit? Can we ensure that more of the money spent by customers reaches local people so that more people benefit from tourist spend? And can we ensure that people are paid a living wage, that animals are fairly treated and that child labour isn’t exploited? The answer to all these questions is an emphatic ‘yes’ for all of us without the need for complicated and expensive sustainability programmes to back it up.
Sustainability curve
Clearly, massive companies will need to do a lot more, and certain elements of the supply chain will be investing significant sums in developing technology – think about the efforts of the airline industry with their sustainable aviation goals for net zero by 2050 as an example.
For the rest of us – mid and small-sized tour operators and travel agencies – we should feel empowered to do whatever we can and proud of any efforts we are able to make to be more sustainable in all three areas of the sustainability triangle, namely people, places and planet.
Can I quantify exactly what our negative and positive impact of everything we do at Globus in terms of hard figures and facts? No.
Can I proudly talk about everything we are doing and the intended impact and benefits and feel confident that we are headed in the right direction? Yes!
We shouldn’t feel embarrassed that we haven’t done everything and that we are at different points on the sustainability curve, but confident that we are committed to doing something to make our businesses more sustainable.
So for those who aren’t sure where to start or aren’t sure what to do, my advice is to do something. Get started using the “do the right thing” mindset and you will quickly be on the road to being more sustainable and able to talk about what you are doing.