Travel Counsellors launches ‘Responsible Travel’ campaign to support sustainable focus

Travel Counsellors, the UK’s largest and fast-growing technology platform for travel entrepreneurs, has this week announced the launch of a new Responsible Travel campaign to coincide with Earth Day.

This year-long campaign, which 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. This includes working with its supplier partners to learn from one another, surfacing the products that align with the company’s goal to champion sustainability in travel.

As such, 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 meet the standard of sustainability recognised by the Global Sustainable Tourism Council. This credential means the hotel 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 Travel Counsellors the importunity to present more sustainable options for their customers.

The business is also working with partner, Trees4Travel, enabling Travel Counsellors to help clients calculate and offset their emissions, something that 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.

All of this is surfaced and promoted as part of the campaign, which hosts a digital brochure featuring 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 different information, and to ensure business owners feel they have the right insight and knowledge to support the campaign, there is a responsible travel training guide and a host of and 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, comments: “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.

“We continue to work hard to educate our community and this includes dedicated training, which is mandatory for all those that join us to build their own business, and the launched of a refreshed sustainable training programme last month. The Green Leaf initiative is a core focus for us as we work with supplier partners to highlight sustainable product via our platform. Green Leaf product now accounts for 11 per cent of bookings within Phenix, which we are focused on increasing, It’s also 20 per cent in terms of booking value indicating that sustainable choices are becoming more popular with the premium leisure traveller, where value is placed on enjoying authentic experiences that benefit both the traveller and the destination. 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 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’.

For more information on Responsible Travel with Travel Counsellors, visit https://travelcounsellors.foleon.com/magazine/responsible-travel/