Travel firms have been urged to work collectively on sustainability to get the right messages to customers while ensuring staff understand the issue.
Kuoni communications director Rachel O’Reilly told the Travel Weekly Sustainability Summit that sustainability should not be viewed as a way to gain a competitive edge.
Her plea followed a warning by Competition and Markets Authority assistant director consumer protection Mike Coates of ‘huge competition’ around travel companies’ sustainability to win consumers’ trust.
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Speaking on a panel about communicating sustainability, O’Reilly said: “We all need healthy competition but this [sustainability] is a non-compete issue.”
She said Kuoni was aware of customers’ growing interest in sustainability, adding: “We do need a framework; we need to navigate a path. Educating customers is super important and we need to make sure our staff get it.
“We have a role to play as a tour operator and retailer. Increasingly we are seeing the topic come up and staff need to be able to talk intelligently about what holiday companies are doing in terms of their impact on local communities.”
She said travel companies were still grappling on how to communicate what action they and the industry have taken on sustainability.
“We need to find a way to tell that story proactively. We all need to learn from each other where we see something good being done and copy it. I’d like to see us working positively, collectively as an industry,” she said, adding: “Internal communications are super important; I want sustainability to be a naturally integrated part of how we do business.”
Travalyst head of strategy Polly Lomas said the not for profit collection of travel and technology brands had been formed in 2019 to bring information to the public and travel companies to help them “to make more sustainable choices”.
She said: “We recognised the value travel could have and the growing awareness of consumers around sustainability. Where we have been focusing is on aviation and accommodation. The buck doesn’t stop with providing information. We are working with nine of the leading travel and technology brands and they have a responsibility as well.”
Coates said the CMA already worked with the Advertising Standards Authority to “share as much information as possible”.
“We have regular conversations about how we interpret the law. We will speak to them to make sure we are not conflicting or leaving gaps; we are trying to align what we are doing,” he said.