Travel Counsellors has announced a year-long responsible travel campaign.
The homeworking group’s campaign includes a dedicated microsite platform for its customers to raise awareness and interest of responsible travel and has been launched to coincide with this month’s Earth Day.
This includes information on sustainable destinations and hotels and highlights ways to support local communities and wildlife in destinations, and ultimately, how travellers can reduce their carbon footprint.
A digital brochure is being produced which features related content with supporting social media assets for Travel Counsellors to showcase the campaign and sustainable activity across their own social channels.
The company also provides its agents with further marketing materials such as dedicated emails and e-cards to share the campaign with their customers while a responsible travel training guide aims to ensure business owners have the right knowledge and insight to support the campaign. Further information will be continuously shared through the company’s communications channels including TCTV shows and through its marketing hub.
The campaign comes as Travel Counsellors continues to work towards a pledge to halve its own carbon footprint by 2030. This involves a strategy and investment to reduce the company’s footprint, educating its community of agents on the role the industry can play and influencing customers to make more sustainable travel choices.
This also includes working with suppliers and sourcing products which align with the company’s goal to champion sustainability.
Travel Counsellors has already identified ‘Green Leaf’ properties within its accommodation providers in its inhouse booking platform Phenix, allowing agents to search and offer more sustainable options to customers.
The properties meet the Global Sustainable Tourism Council’s standard of sustainability, meaning the hotels have worked to maximise their social and economic benefits in the local community, enhanced cultural heritage, reduced negative environmental impacts and are effectively planning their futures with sustainability in mind.
Green Leaf product now accounts for 11% of bookings within Phenix, and 20% of booking value, indicating sustainable choices are becoming more popular with premium leisure travellers, said Travel Counsellors customer director Dave Callan.
Travel Counsellors has also partnered with Trees4Travel to help clients to calculate and offset their emissions, and enabling money to be donated to United Nations certified emissions reductions projects and to planting more trees.
Callan said: “We are on a journey to travel more responsibly and we believe that by educating our community and customers, while offering a more diverse selection of sustainable experiences will help to ensure that our impact is as positive as possible for both the planet and its people.
“This campaign will not only arm our Travel Counsellors with the right tools, platform and insight but will add value to the growing sustainability needs of our customers, enhancing the pivotal role our community play in personally guiding customers to make more responsible choices when travelling.”
Dedicated training on responsible travel is compulsory for all new Travel Counsellors, which launched a refreshed sustainable training programme last month.
Callan added: “The Green Leaf initiative is a core focus for us as we work with supplier partners to highlight sustainable product via our platform. Our view is that the world should be enjoyed by everyone and we should work together to look after it, and we hope that this campaign plays a small part towards making that a reality.”
A recent poll carried by Travel Counsellors found nearly 90% of customers were interested in travelling more sustainably while a further 80% said it was ‘very important for them to experience local culture while they travel’.
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