Happy Trails! Indonesia, a travel company based in Denpasar, Bali, was awarded the highest level of Travelife Sustainable Tourism certification yesterday, at the World Travel Market in London, making it the first company in Indonesia to reach this level. Travelife Certification is a program recognized by the GSTC and UNWTO as an international certification program of the highest standards. It also conforms to the ISO 14001 standard on environmental management.
CEO Gerald van Amerongen on this award:
“We are extremely proud to get the certification and hope many of our Indonesian colleagues will follow suit. Indonesia is such an unimaginably beautiful country with its thousands of islands, its amazing cultures and natural richness and yet, a lot is under threat. Business and especially travel business needs to take its social, environmental and cultural responsibility seriously to protect and promote the destination. This certification is just the beginning; we will proceed to persuade our key hotels and suppliers to take sustainability very seriously. Within our company we have always stressed the word ‘’Happy” in our name. We want all the stakeholders to be happy: our staff, our customers, the people we visit and the nature we enjoy. We will work hard to do our bit in a time when life on our beautiful planet is under threat in so many ways. We will soon proceed with our businesses in Malaysia and on Borneo to reach the highest level of Sustainable Tourism as well’’
‘’We have taken several very concrete measures, such as the switch away from plastic water bottles, saving as many as 100.000 a year and to compensate flight emissions for staff flights and soon for flights from all our customers as well, by donating the carbon offsets to a reforestation program in Kalimantan. Further internally, we have developed a ‘bike to work’ program in which all our employees encouraged to come to the office in a more sustainable way.”
“To receive the recognition by Travelife is a great motivation to keep moving forward on our path to sustainability. I feel very blessed to work with our team in Indonesia, which is amazingly supportive and thoroughly embraces all steps we have made. Further, it is great to see that the changes we have made within our offices, also have motivated our team members to make changes in their personal lives and homes.”
Travelife Certification is the most extensive program for the travel industry, including standards of energy efficiency and conservation, water and waste management, greenhouse gas emissions, labor practices, human rights, community relations, ecosystem conservation, cultural impacts, health and safety, fair business practices, customer protection and animal welfare. www.travelife.info
The implementation of the sustainability certification was guided by Graham Read, a specialist in sustainable tourism, working freelance for Global Discovery, a network of inbound travel agents around the world. For more information Graham can be reached at [email protected]