How can we #MakeTravelMatter?

© Petr Malinak – 123RF.com

There’s no doubt to us that we should be working together to ensure our industry is a leader in sustainability. As travel and hospitality providers, many of us already recognise that it is our responsibility and opportunity to lead by example.

The critical step now is to plainly ask ourselves how we are going to ensure travel plays an elemental role in shaping a positive present and a better future. For TTC, that means continuing to look across our operations and offices, identifying the places and processes where we can make judicious changes for the better, in the ways we work and behave, to further reduce our footprint and encourage sustainability.

For example - our Toronto office has undergone significant changes in recent years in the ways we manage climate control, dispose of waste, and use energy. It’s a model we’re following at our offices around the world. We’ve introduced a Multi-Year Plastics Elimination Strategy, which will see the removal of all avoidable single-use plastics across all our operations by 2022. We’ve enacted an expertly vetted animal welfare policy to guarantee the health and safety of the animals our guests encounter throughout every experience we offer. We’re championing artisan enterprises and heritage business around the world through the itineraries our brands offer and through the grants our not-for-profit TreadRight Foundation provides.

Brett Tollman

These represent just a few of the practices and measures we’ve adopted with the understanding that we all must play our part to effectively turn our industry into a genuinely sustainable body.

As we recognise World Tourism Day this year, we invite the travel agent community to consider how you too are going to make travel matter. What changes or ameliorations can you make within your sphere of influence to help build a better future, one in which travel is always an agent for positive change for all involved?

These don’t have to be considerable adjustments to the way you work, simply considered ones. Start where you work and please don’t delay or linger any longer. Align yourself with businesses that share sustainable values. Ask the extra question when helping clients make purchase decisions. Ask yourself what straightforward yet valuable changes you can make to the way you operate.

Ask yourself: how can I make travel matter?
We did. And we’re a better business for it.