Intrepid Travel has started a global review about its approach to marketing after the Advertising Standards Authority upheld a complaint about the operator’s “people & planet-friendly” phrase.
The ASA ruling came after the watchdog received a single complaint about a poster, seen on the London Underground in November 2022.
The ad featured two women in front of the Giza Pyramids in Egypt, alongside the text “People & planet-friendly small group adventures since 1989”.
The complainant challenged whether the claim “people & planet-friendly small group adventures” misleadingly minimised the impact of Intrepid Travel’s holidays on the environment.
In its response to the ASA, Intrepid Travel Group UK said it considered that the average reader of the ad would interpret “people & planet-friendly small group adventures since 1989” as a limited claim related to its small group tour offerings, rather than an absolute environmental claim which included travel to and from the destination country.
It considered the ad had not misrepresented the impact of international flights or their tours on the environment, and highlighted that the ad included a link to Intrepid’s website which had qualifying information regarding its environmental credentials.
Furthermore, Intrepid pointed out its business operations and services are certified as carbon neutral by Climate Active, and provided details of several environmental schemes, such as its Seven Point Commitment Plan and Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) membership to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
However, the ASA upheld the complaint, as its code says “the basis of environmental claims must be clear, and that unqualified claims could mislead if they omitted significant information”.
“We considered that the presentation of the Giza Pyramids in Egypt within the ad, together with the claim ‘planet-friendly’, indicated that such tours were international and that it would be necessary to travel, in most cases by flying, to take part in their tours,” said the ASA.
“Whilst we acknowledged that [Intrepid] took part in a number of environmental schemes alongside their carbon offsetting programme, we considered that those schemes did not specifically relate to the life cycle of a holiday with Intrepid Travel.
“Because air travel produced high levels of both CO2 and non-CO2 emissions, which made a substantial contribution to climate change, and those emissions were not accounted for by Intrepid Travel, we considered that the absolute claim ‘people & planet-friendly adventures’ had not been adequately substantiated.
“We concluded the ad had misleadingly minimised the impact of Intrepid Travel’s holidays.”
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The ASA said the ad must not appear again in that form and told Intrepid to ensure the basis of future environmental claims was made clear and did not give a misleading impression of the impact of their holidays – and that “robust substantiation” was held to support them.
Responding to the ruling, Zina Bencheikh, managing director EMEA for Intrepid Travel, said: “As travel’s largest certified B Corp, we are committed to transparency and that means facing up to our mistakes.
“We fully accept that we did not adequately substantiate the term ‘planet-friendly’ and should not have included it in our advertising.
“As a result, we have removed the phrase from our marketing globally and have begun a review around how we can better talk about our trips in future.
“For the past 34 years, Intrepid Travel tours have been designed to minimise their environmental impact, using public transport and low carbon options wherever possible.
“We have been carbon neutral since 2010, but we know that is no longer enough.
“That’s why we are taking steps to decarbonise our business in line with our science-based carbon reduction targets and Climate Commitment Plan.
“As a certified B Corp, we are open about our impact and make public reports on our progress.
“Greenwashing has become all too prevalent in the travel industry – and all industries – and we welcome the ASA becoming more stringent in its regulation of advertising claims related to climate change and the environment.”