Responsible Travel
Responsible Travel - Our Aims
Our Aims and Achievements
There’s a lot of good that can come out of travelling responsibly and investing in the countries we choose to visit. Things like employing a local guide so s/he can earn a regular living for his/her family. Or paying to enter a National Park, which then provides a financial incentive for forests to be maintained. By making the right choices, we can go a long way to protecting our delicate environment and creating a sustained better future for many people.
Here are some of our key aims and achievements so far in our quest to travel responsibly:
Local group leaders/staff welfare – local group leaders are employed on more than 90% of our trips. We train them regularly, and they offer the best way to find out more about the local culture. In addition we aim to use local guides and support staff wherever possible, providing more employment. We have a porter protection policy in place.
Use local services – by using local transport and as many local businesses as possible i.e. restaurants, shops and equipment providers, money stays in-country and local enterprise is encouraged. We also choose locally-owned accommodation. 25% of our trips now feature a homestay, giving money to local families to accommodate our guests.
Information – everyone who travels with us gets a copy of our Responsible Travel policy. Our leaders are also briefed on Responsible Travel, and will provide information on tour. You can find out more about your specific trip on our website, the trip dossier or by asking one of our sales team (who also receive regular training on Responsible Travel, and visit projects during travel on a The Adventure Company trip). Education is the key to travelling responsibly, and we hope you’ll take our information and use it as a base to travel responsibly yourselves.
Environment – we audit all of our trips according to how their environmental impact is minimised. This means making sure local trekking guidelines are followed, no litter is left behind, water sources are environmentally friendly and responsible cooking fuels are used, if applicable. We also have guidelines in place for specific excursions, like snorkelling and tiger viewing, so awareness is raised on how to protect, and not disturb, fragile environments.
Itinerary Development – when planning our trips, we consider how each one can run responsibly. Can we source a homestay? Where can we use local transport, instead of a charter bus? Is there a project we can support, or is there a visit where fees paid will go towards environmental development? Once the trip is operating, it’s audited on these things and many more. The trip is then given a score to assess its responsibility and it’s an on-going process to increase that. We aim to ensure our trips are as responsible as they possibly can be. You can choose to travel on one of our favourite, highest scoring trips by looking out for the Responsible Travel logo on individual trips, or clicking on Top Ten Responsible Trips from our homepage.
Projects – 55% of our trips now support a local project. This could be a school in India or a community centre in Tanzania. These grass-roots projects are carefully chosen to offer financial or material help where it’s needed to give communities a hand in their own development. See the “Our Projects page”. Our own Foundation supports more small projects – for more information see the Foundation page on this website.
However, it’s also important we get it right at home as well.
Local Community – we link in-country schools with schools in the UK to foster mutual education benefits. So far we have links in India, Tanzania and Sri Lanka. This involves UK school children writing to pupils in other countries, in a pen-pal scheme. This enables children in countries worldwide to practise their English and UK children to gain a cultural understanding of other countries through friendship and education.
Here are some of the things we’re doing at our UK operational base in Hampshire.
UK Operation
We offset all staff carbon emissions from work-related flights and travel to work. We also offset our office energy levels and use an electricity company that invests in wind power. We have an energy officer, whose role is to monitor our office energy consumption and find new energy-saving initiatives. Solar panels are also something we’re considering for our building, in the future.
We drink Fair Trade tea and coffee, and our The Adventure Company staff t-shirts are from a sustainable supplier.
We recycle our office paper, and educate staff on how to cut waste. By developing our website and electronic literature, we’re also trying to reduce the amount of paper materials we produce. We recycle mobile phones and toner cartridges. If we have any old computers they are sent to countries we operate in – namely educational centres in Nepal and Morocco. We also collect outdoor gear for porters, foreign coins for Friends of Conservation and clothes, toys, books and stationery and distribute it to our worldwide projects.
However, we recognise there’s always more we can do, and we’re working on that. All of our initiatives are monitored by a team of staff dedicated to Responsible Travel at The Adventure Company, who meet monthly to review current practices and develop new projects.
