NEWS SPECIAL REPORT
Industry charity the Travel Foundation is moving from small-scale projects to global programmes. Chief executive Salli Felton explains to Ian Taylor
Cyprus. Inset: Salli Felton
Travel Foundation projects, from the Cape to Cyprus
Travel Foundation to work with UN on sustainability
Most people in the UK trade will be familiar with the Travel Foundation, whether it’s through a destination project, the Travel Lottery or Make Holidays Greener month.
But after 13 years, the industry-
backed sustainable tourism charity is looking to move to bigger things, working with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) on an ambitious project – part of the UN’s 10-Year Framework of Programmes (10YFP) for sustainable development. Chief executive Salli Felton said: “The UNWTO wants to bring all those working on sustainable tourism together and we’re the delivery partner of the programme. “We’ll pick five core destinations
worldwide and work with hotels in those destinations, 30-50
properties in each, to reduce food loss while at the same time working with governments to develop minimum standards for hotels. The Travel Foundation will project manage in the destinations. We’re talking about five years’ work.” Felton hopes to have the project up and running within 12 months. She said: “We’ll look at chain hotels, but we also want variety. Where we have chains involved we’ll be looking for them to roll the project out across their properties.” The foundation is working with the UK-based Waste and Resources
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travelweekly.co.uk 11 August 2016
“The UNWTO wants to bring all those working on sustainable tourism together”
Access Programme (Wrap), which Felton explained “has done huge amounts of work on resource efficiency and food waste, and on the carbon and water embedded in food”.
As if that wasn’t enough, the
foundation is also looking to partner with the Rainforest Alliance, which works mainly in Latin America, on a sustainable tourism project, Partners for Change, in Central and South America. Felton said: “The Rainforest Alliance works with inbound operators on more-sustainable products and services. We’re looking at how we might work together on Partners for Change, and on sustainable sourcing.” She said: “As soon as you do things on a bigger scale it’s slower, but by the end of this year we will be working on a different scale.”
The Travel Foundation is looking to scale up some existing destination projects and develop others. Chief executive Salli Felton highlighted three: 1) CAPE NATURE, SOUTH AFRICA: A new project, developed with government conservation agency Cape Nature which manages reserves in the Western Cape. “The reserves need more money, so are increasing the number of tourists,” says Felton. “We’re working in five reserves to see how to ensure the benefits go to local communities.” 2) MAKARSKA RIVIERA, CROATIA: A project involving two established but recently redeveloped hotels in small communities. Felton explains: “We made a detailed assessment before the hotels were redeveloped and followed the process and its effects, identifying the gap between community expectations and reality, issues around access to beaches for local people, and job opportunities. We’ve developed a set of tourism- development standards based on what we’ve learned.” 3) CYPRUS: Two new projects with Tui follow up the Total Impact Measurement and Man- agement (Timm) study at six hotels in Cyprus (Travel Weekly, August 13, 2015). The first is based on the fact that only 13% of tourists to Cyprus take an excursion, when in some des- tinations it is 90%. The second will focus on food. The Timm study found just 37% of Cyprus hotel food was locally sourced. Felton says: “Cyprus has high- quality food but stakeholders said tourists aren’t interested. The project will look at how to promote local produce.”
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