Guests on a Hotelplan and T
ravel Weekly trip
to the French Alps debated sustainability during a round-table discussion. Lucy Huxley reports
S
peakers at the round-table discussion agreed there was both a moral and commercial incentive
to improve the sustainability of their businesses. Joe Ponte, Hotelplan chief
executive, said: “Our mission is to become the most sustainable business in our sector, and not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because the commercial imperative is also important. “Skiing per se is not sustainable –
you’ve got charter flights coming into all these resorts in the mountains. But there is stuff we can do and we’re committed to contributing to the solution and not making it worse.” Prue Stone, the company’s group
head of sustainability, added: “Our winter brands are doing a lot. We’re not perfect and we’re not going to be perfect for a long time. But if we all do something, we’re all going to get a lot better. We’re [carbon] offsetting all our holidays, we’re supporting rewilding projects, we’re investing in alpine resorts and villages, and contributing to local communities. “We’re doing some really cool
stuff but perhaps we don’t talk about it enough.”
10 7 APRIL 2022
Giles Hawke, chief executive
of Cosmos, Globus and Avalon Waterways, said: “Cosmos needs to get to a place where we have someone 100% dedicated to sustainability. “Customers aren’t asking for
sustainable holidays, but get upset when they see non-sustainable things happening. They want to do things, but they want us to help them do them.” He added: “Our operations
teams still find it difficult to talk to hotels about sustainability. That needs to change.” Stone agreed that hotels needed
to shoulder their share of the responsibility, adding: “We need to run tenders for hotels to get our business and we need to hold suppliers to account and make sure they meet sustainability criteria to be in our programmes and uphold the values of our businesses.”
Customer demand Alastair Wilson, managing director of Titan Airways, asked Ponte if Hotelplan would continue to use a supplier if use of sustainable fuels made them more expensive, to which he said: “The answer is yes. Absolutely.” Nicki Tempest-Mitchell, sales and marketing director at Barrhead Travel,
“We have a responsibility to ensure we’re working with partners who have sustainability as a priority”
said customers were yet to proactively ask for sustainable options. But she added: “We have a
responsibility to ensure we’re working with partners who have sustainability as a priority. The challenge is that we have more than 200 partners, so we need an easy way to identify who is taking it seriously.” Derek Jones, chief executive of
Kuoni parent Der Touristik UK, said: “The Travelife scheme is an easy way to identify which partners are operating sustainably. Staff should be trained to look out for Travelife certification.” John Sullivan, head of commercial
at The Advantage Travel Partnership, said: “Not many people are coming into our members’ shops and asking for a sustainable holiday yet. But even those who are more in tune and think about travelling by rail soon re-evaluate their priorities when they see the price of air versus rail.”
travelweekly.co.uk
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