TUI green or greenwash?

TUI – Holidays Forever – launch in Make Holidays Greener week. Jam today or cynical green branding?

The sister tour operators Thomson and First Choice, part of the TUI group, unveiled ‘Holidays Forever’ this week  to coincide with ‘Make Holidays Greener’ week, the Travel Foundation’s awareness campaign, focusing on how holidaymakers can make small changes on their holiday to help local people benefit and protect the environment in holiday destinations.

The new brand is meant to bring together all sustainable tourism initiatives of the sister tour operators under one clear and stylish green umbrella. It aims to get Thomson and First Choice customers supporting sustainable tourism to help preserve holiday destinations for the long term, and to raise awareness of sustainable tourism amongst the company’s employees.

Thomson and First Choice decided to launch the brand after carrying out customer research that found that 96% of holidaymakers surveyed care about protecting the local environment and wildlife in the resorts they visit. ‘Over 90% of our customers expect the company to support holiday destinations and to do something about climate change, and 83% want advice on greener holidays from their tour operator’, said Ashton.

The new Holidays Forever brand encompasses 20 sustainable tourism commitments that Thomson and First Choice have pledged to achieve. These include reducing carbon emissions from TUI Travel airlines by 6% between 2008 and 2014. This builds on the 8% CO2 reduction achieved by the group in 2008 over the previous year, which equated to more than 580,000 tonnes of CO2. Reductions of this scale are equivalent to taking more than 120,000 cars off the road for one year.

As well as committing to reduce carbon emissions from Thomson and First Choice shops by 7% by the end of 2010 and to recycle 65% of general waste from shops, the group is committed to protecting the Earth’s natural resources, increasing their customer donations going to sustainable tourism and renewable energy projects through the World Care Fund and continuing to support the Travel Foundation to meet its goals of getting hotels to adopt practices that reduce water, energy and waste.

To communicate its sustainable development strategy to its varied customer base, the company is planning to launch Holidays Forever microsites for both brands. ‘We want to show our customers how they can make their holiday more sustainable at every step of their journey’, said  Jane Ashton, TUI UK’s Head of Sustainable Development .

Each microsite for Thomson and First Choice will reflect the fact that Holidays Forever is a joint initiative, but each site will have its own voice in keeping with the brand identity. ‘The microsites will help customers find information more easily in order to make more informed choices’, said TUI Communications Director Christian Cull. A joint landing page is already up and by the end of July the sites will be fully functional.

In a real-life example of how the holiday company is supporting local communities in destinations, food writer Jo Pratt shared her experience of promoting the Jungle Jam project to Thomson and First Choice customers at the 5T Sensatori resort in Mexico. The Jungle Jam project, which was spearheaded by the Travel Foundation and is now financed by the holiday company through the World Care Fund, supports a group of Mayan women in producing large quantities of pitaya and papaya jams and in selling them to hotels. Jo Pratt has demonstrated easy recipes to hotel guests and encouraged them to buy the jams to support the project.

Very impressive, but is it all ‘Greenwash’

Tour operators have a terrible reputation. In their survival-of-the-sharpest world, operators who leave the least cash, and other benefits, in destinations tend to last the longest. Vertical integration has hitherto ring-fenced passenger spend and kept the big bucks going in one direction only – the operator’s bank account. So in an interesting spin on sustainability, the operators haven’t left footprints in destinations, or anything else, when they’ve upped and gone to new, cheaper, resort opportunities.

Like most big, sensible travel and tourism companies, TUI has recognized early the financial benefits of energy awareness; another organization to take the plunge is IHG. The world’s biggest hotel company says that it is already saving $50m a year from its Green Engage scheme. So the TUI energy savings, although laudable and far-sighted, are clearly for the benefit of its shareholders rather than the Earth.

The ‘Jam Today’ schemes, though, and other micro-enterprises are steps in the right direction, though tiny ones in comparison with companies like TUI’s social and economic effect on destinations – and of course publicity-spun out of all proportion to their actual effects.
And the World Care Fund is largely supported by TUI customers, even though TUI does undertake to double donations – in effect it means that the TUI schemes, for which TUI takes full credit, are 50% supported by its clients.

Enough of the nitpicking. Nobody wants to make the good the enemy of the best and First Choice, under Dermot Blastland was the key first mover and leader in the UK sustainable tourism arena. At one time it was the only major operator to make a wholehearted financial and management commitment – a brave move indeed, and very much against reactionary travel trade  opinion.
These are the first few tiny steps in a very long journey, its destination one where all tourism industry stakeholders share the same goals.

Valere Tjolle
With assistance from Rosalina Babourkova

Valere Tjolle is editor of the Sustainable Tourism Report Suite, special offer at: www.travelmole.com/stories/1142003.php

For more information on the Holidays Forever brand: www.holidaysforever.co.uk/

For more information on the Jungle Jam project: www.thetravelfoundation.org.uk/index.php