Thomas Cook makes travel greener

By Emma Jamieson - 06 May 2009 Thomas Cook Makes Travel Greener

Thomas Cook is the latest in a line of major travel companies to sign up to the Travel Foundation’s Make Travel Greener training programme. Bringing the Travel Foundation close to achieving its target of having 10,000 travel industry staff completing the programme only two weeks after being launched, ABTA has also recently signed on.

Make Travel Greener is a simple, straightforward training programme designed to educate workers in the industry about green tourism issues and define responsible tourism clearly as a whole thus enabling them to better transfer this knowledge to the customer.

Thomas Cook were used as a case study by the Travel Foundation for its efforts to introduce green initiatives across the board and better present its environmental and social responsibility strategies to clients. By signing up its overseas workers to the Make Travel Greener programme, Thomas Cook leaders hope to eventually see staff in all of its centres able to confidently inform customers on green holiday choices and options, educate the client base generally and become “ambassadors for sustainable tourism” encouraging all colleagues to take part in the training.

The programme has created a real buzz within the industry, with staff eager to take part and compete with colleagues to improve their knowledge of sustainable tourism issues – the Travel Foundation is even issuing prizes for the first 200 people to get the highest point scores in the quiz. To reward staff who have taken part in the training and help demonstrate first hand what responsible tourism means within the travel industry as a whole and how hotels and operators are adapting to this new global tourism trend, Thomas Cook will send a group of employees on a sustainable family holiday to Cyprus. They will participate in road clean-ups, visit “green” hotels and learn about the small details that make holidays “responsible”.

To get a better understanding of the training programme, I signed up to see it in action. The training programme is broken down into small modules covering different topics. You read short pieces of informative text then answer questions to test your knowledge. There are also questionnaires to gauge your opinion on different topics such how you would rate different impacts of responsible tourism on a community in terms of importance The interface is easy to use, simple to understand and offers detailed information in small, easy-to-digest bites. The whole questionnaire and programme takes little more than an hour if you relax and take your time to read and absorb all the information.

Thomas Cook is eager to have all of its staff strained in the Make Travel Greener programme, seeing it as a key component in a move to bring the company up to speed with the biggest industry trend of the future. Because it is short and easy to use, with an element of competitiveness thrown in, it is an ideal approach to raise interest and enthusiasm for the topic and pass it on to the customer seeking information and greater choices.

Angus Porter, Thomas Cook group strategy director said: "It is important customer-facing employees feel comfortable talking about responsible tourism. Our guests are increasingly looking for holidays that have less negative impact on destinations." He added, "The Make Travel Greener campaign is ground breaking. With continual development, our staff will become experts on this vital aspect of travel."

To take part in the training programme, log onto www.maketravelgreener.com, enter your name and email address and you’re all set.

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