Being green can be beneficial for travel and tourism companies
An organization that champions sustainability in tourism says tourism firms can be profitable and good stewards of Mother Earth at the same time.
U.S.-based Tourism Cares said during a recent webinar that tourism can be a force for good, providing positive social, environmental and economic impacts for people around the globe, with webinar viewers told that if they support travel in an environmentally friendly manner they’re part of a growing trend.
“Travellers are increasingly drawn to environmentally friendly practices,” Helen Usher of ANIMONDIAL – a consultancy firm that works with businesses on such matters as animal welfare and halting biodiversity loss – told listeners.
A survey of European Union residents showed a solid majority wanted to make their vacations environmentally sustainable, she added.
Usher suggested that those interested in green travel consider vacations that work with a region’s Indigenous people, who likely have “an extensive understanding of the nature around them.”
The webinar also saw Joe Imhoff of Maui zipline company Skyline Hawai’i recount how his company has been active in local conservation efforts, among other things having planted 27,000 plants native to Hawaii in the area Skyline Hawai’i operates in.
Some 17,000 volunteers have assisted with those efforts.
“We’re helping restore some of the most fragile ecosystems in the world, ” said Imhoff, who labeled Hawaii the “extinction epicenter of the United States.”
Much of the vegetation that originally covered Hawaii has disappeared while other plants and trees not native to the state – such as the eucalyptus trees first brought from Australia – can now easily be spotted, he continued.
Skyline Hawai’i sets aside some of its revenue to fund conservation efforts and trains staff on conservation matters, with Imhoff declaring that “businesses have a responsibility to try to promote biodiversity.”
Katie Hall of the Florida-based Coral Restoration Foundation reported her organization has volunteers help restore coral in the waters off the Florida Keys, a tourism-dependent destination popular with divers.
Scientists are increasingly alarmed about the health of the world’s coral.
Hall said the Coral Restoration Foundation has worked with many groups, including the Boy Scouts of America.
Tourism Cares’ John Sutherland cited other examples of tourism having positive impacts, including projects in Indonesia that work to protect endangered orangutans and enable local ecotourism, and an Indigenous-owned firm in B.C. – Haida Style Expeditions – that takes people into Haida Gwaii.
