Travel Counsellors has announced the launch of a new Responsible Travel campaign coming off the back of the weekend’s Earth Day.
The year-long campaign from the Manchester-based platform for entrepreneurial ‘counsellors,’ who each run their own travel agency through the TC umbrella and technology, includes a dedicated microsite platform for customers, aims to increase interest and educate both the Travel Counsellors community and customers on responsible travel by providing them with information on more sustainable destinations and hotels, highlighting the ways to support local communities and wildlife in destinations, and ultimately how they can help reduce their travel carbon footprint.
The new platform launches as the company continues to work towards its pledge to halve its own carbon footprint by 2030, with a strategy and investment in reducing its own impact at company level, educating its own community on the role the industry plays in driving action, and influencing customers to make more sustainable travel choices.
Its strategy also includes working with supplier partners to learn from one another and identify products that align with the company’s goal to champion sustainability in travel.
Through working with accommodation providers within its in-house booking platform Phenix, Travel Counsellors has already launched and identified its own accredited ‘Green Leaf’ properties which have met the standard of sustainability recognised by the Global Sustainable Tourism Council.
This credential means the venue has worked to maximise its social and economic benefits in the local community, enhance cultural heritage, reduce negative impacts on the environment and is effectively planning its future with sustainability in mind. This is promoted and searchable within Phenix and gives individual Travel Counsellors the importunity to present more sustainable options for customers.
The business is also working with partner, Trees4Travel, enabling Travel Counsellors to help clients calculate and offset their emissions. This option is proving popular particularly in the luxury space, enabling money to be donated towards United Nations-certified emissions reductions projects as wells as to planting more trees.
The campaign features a digital brochure offering content based on customer engagement and interests, with supporting social media assets to enable Travel Counsellors to showcase the campaign and sustainable activity across their own social channels. The company is also providing further marketing materials such as dedicated emails and ecards to share the campaign and information, and to ensure business owners feel they have the insight and knowledge to support the campaign.
There is also a responsible travel training guide and a host of further information continuously being shared through the company’s communications channels including TCTV shows and via its Marketing Hub.
Dave Callan, customer director at Travel Counsellors, said: “We are on a journey to travel more responsibly and we believe that 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.”
A recent poll carried out by Travel Counsellors found that nearly 90 per cent of customers are interested in travelling more sustainably. Meanwhile, a further 80 per cent said it was “very important for them to experience local culture while they travel.”
