Newmarket Holidays Launches New ‘Travel for Good’ Hub
Newmarket Holidays, the award-winning escorted tour operator, has launched a new – ‘Travel for Good’ hub – which will share the steps that the operator is taking to improve its global impact. The new ‘Travel for Good’ hub will highlight Newmarket Holidays’ sustainability journey, including current projects, partnerships and programmes and will track the operator’s progress in ensuring that its holidays have a positive impact on both people and the planet.
The new hub will provide information on initiatives the escorted touring company is taking to reduce its carbon footprint and will explore how its holidays contribute to global wealth redistribution and the wellbeing and mental health of its customers. ‘Travel for Good’ also features a Q and A with Newmarket Holidays’ CEO, Niel Alobaidi, on responsibility and wellbeing in the travel industry.
Commenting on the new initiative, Alobaidi said: “I’m really pleased with our first steps on this journey. We all know that there are areas where the travel industry has work to do to become truly sustainable, but I think it sometimes gets a bit lost that the industry does do a lot of good, whether that be through the hundreds of millions of people it employs all around the world, either directly or indirectly, to the redistribution of global wealth from richer places to poorer places. It also provides a lot of social benefits to those lucky enough to experience travelling to new places. As such this project is all about acknowledging that we have a lot to do and creating a plan to deliver positive change, but also sharing the importance of global travel.”
Newmarket Holidays believes that it has a responsibility to be transparent about what it is already doing and areas in which it can improve. As Alobaidi explains: “We are still quite early into this process and it is important to recognise that, however it is now a specific area of strategic focus for the business. We have selected a team of people from across the business who are assigned with identifying, prioritising, and delivering a range of initiatives focused on responsibility and sustainability. We are also working with an external specialist to measure our carbon footprint and help us identify where we can make the biggest differences most quickly and enable us to set some more specific goals.”
The new hub will highlight some of the company’s tours that have positive impacts on customers and the people and places they visit – from wildlife conservation projects in South Africa to community projects in the villages of Cambodia. Kathy Vigolo, Head of Long Haul, says: “My personal favourite positive impacts tour is Costa Rica – Wildlife, Rainforest and Caribbean Beach. Costa Rica is a country that has consistently shown great care and devotion in preserving its land, flora, fauna and culture and is one of the world leaders for sustainable tourism, prioritising eco-tourism and nature preservation.”
‘Travel for Good’ will highlight carbon reduction and offsetting efforts, including details on how its brochures are carbon balanced in paper and production with emissions offset with the World Land Trust (WLT) through the protection of threatened habitats and regeneration of degraded habitats.
Other attributes of the ‘Travel for Good’ Hub include: 10 responsible travel tips for customers; a breakdown of the company’s community, environmental and social impacts; details on the ‘Travel for Good’ promise ensuring all partners adhere to its standards; information on what the company is doing in-house to improve responsibility and wellbeing; and details of the operator’s partnership with charities, such as Just a Drop.
The new ‘Travel for Good’ hub can be viewed here: https://www.newmarketholidays.co.uk/travel-for-good
