Travel giant?s ?Sustainable Holidays Plan 2012-14? details 20 commitments including a pledge to operate Europe?s most fuel efficient airlines and a seal of approval from Forum for the Future
Building on a 10 year commitment to improving the sustainability of travel, TUI Travel?s new Sustainable Holidays Plan 2012-2014 marks the next step in its journey towards a more sustainable future.
Part of the FTSE4Good Index and Carbon Disclosure Leadership Index, a core company value is ?Responsible Leadership? and our businesses aspire to practice this across the board, from helping customers to choose ?greener and fairer? hotels to making their planes more efficient. TUI Travel?s vision is to make travel experiences special whilst minimising environmental impact, respecting culture and people and bringing economic benefits to communities.
With this in mind, TUI Travel has set itself four goals to achieve by 2015:
- Deliver 10 million ?greener and fairer? holidays
- Operate Europe?s most fuel-efficient airlines and save more than 20,000 tonnes of carbon from our ground operations
- Our colleagues will rate TUI Travel as a leader in sustainability
- Customers to regard TUI Travel as a leader in delivering more sustainable holidays
- To achieve these goals, the travel Group has identified 20 challenging and measurable commitments* against which it will report progress on annually.
Commenting on the plan, Peter Long, Chief Executive of TUI Travel PLC said: ?Achieving our vision is critical to the future health of our own business, the wider industry, the customers we serve and the communities they visit. Hence our new Sustainable Holidays Plan ? four over-arching sustainable development goals, underpinned by 20 challenging and measurable commitments – which businesses across TUI Travel will work to deliver and through which we aim to lead the industry, creating change at scale.??
Progress towards these targets has already been made by several parts of the Group. For example:
- Thomson?s Sensatori Resort in Crete saved over ?200,000 by reducing energy and water in recent years
- TUI Travel?s investment in renewable energy projects in key destinations is due to deliver 1 million tonnes of CO2 savings by 2014
- ?21 million cost savings have been achieved through environmental initiatives between 2008 and 2011**
- 5,800 of TUI UK & Ireland?s colleagues trained in sustainable tourism in 2011
- Thomson Airways was the first UK airline to fly customers on sustainable biofuel
Stephanie Draper, Director of Systems Innovation at Forum for the Future added: ??This plan recognises the need to combine external engagement with internal performance. It is great to see a strong commitment to engaging customers in more sustainable holidays, but also pushing the development of new, innovative products that can deliver these holidays in ways that really decouple growth from environmental impact. This approach shows the increasing maturity of TUI Travel?s sustainability journey ? differentiating themselves through sustainability in tricky times and starting to shape the market for a better future.??
Source: TUI Travel plc