Inside Travel Group has outlined plans to achieve B Corp status in early 2023, joining a small but growing band of certified travel companies in the UK.
The Asia specialist tour operating group aims to follow the Intrepid Group, which became the biggest travel company globally to achieve B Corp status in 2018, and Pura Aventura, which claimed to be the first specialist tour operator in the UK with the certification last year.
The company, which includes brands InsideAsia Tours and InsideJapan Tours and operates in the UK, the US and Australia, announced significant investment in June from private investment group Blandford Capital LLP.
Co-founder Alastair Donnelly said: “We are in the verification process, which we expect to complete in December. We hope to be confirmed [as a B Corp] in early 2023. We have been working towards this since 2019 and made a long-term commitment to it in summer 2020.
“Simon [King, co-founder] and I have always said the business is not just about delivering profits for the shareholders. B Corp’s key principle is around running a business for people, planet and profit equally.
“For me that sums up what business should be about.”
B Corp is the only certification that measures the entirety of a company’s social and environmental performance, creating a public and legally binding commitment to balance profit with people and the planet.
Donnelly added that B Corp gives businesses a framework about how to run their firms and makes it easier to make the “right decisions”, such as choosing a green energy provider.
The operator’s commitment to sustainability, such as offsetting all its products “and then some”, was already helping with recruitment.
“Simon and I meet every new starter and more often than not our commitment to sustainability is right up there and they say our values are closely aligned to theirs; that’s coming out in recruitment,” he said.
Donnelly hopes the certification of the Inside Travel Group will spur other travel companies to follow suit.
“We want to be part of [the movement] leading travel to become a more sustainable industry,” he said.
“We feel that by shouting about it, more people will join that movement.
“We see B Corp as having benefits for our business and that if you don’t take sustainability seriously, your business will fail.”