UK: This week saw the “Rest of the World” Responsible Tourism Awards with those who secured a gold award to be considered for a Global Responsible Tourism Award in November.
The “Rest of the World” Responsible Tourism Awards gold winners unveiled this week included Tour operator TUI for making tourism more inclusive.
TUI UK and Ireland serves more than six million holidaymakers a year and has a dedicated Accessible Holidays Strategy team, which has partnered with AccessAble to survey hotels and develop detailed access guides – now available online.
TUI has also partnered with Sign Live to provide interpreting services for British sign language users via video relay.
Another gold award winner was Wise Sustainability for its work in tackling climate change. Wise Sustainability assists businesses in reducing their greenhouse gas emissions by “turning the invisibility of energy, water, food, and materials use into visible, measured, monitored, and controlled consumption that reduces the use of finite supplies.” We shared a report on the launch of the Wise Widget earlier this month, where hotels can show their reporting data as a live verified feed.
Borneo Adventure was also a gold award winner. The specialist tour operator based in Malaysia works with the local Iban communities in Sarawak in a way which has increased local sourcing and created shared value. In the award submission Borneo Adventure said: “There is no point talking about conservation when communities are trying to overcome poverty.”
Forty families in the region are now involved in tourism and tours to the area focus on conservation and the environment.
Emeritus professor Harold Goodwin, managing director of the Responsible Tourism Partnership and chair of the judges said: “All our Rest of the World Responsible Tourism Award winners competed in a very tough field and are all outstanding examples of initiatives which will provide inspiration for other destinations and organisations to learn from.”
The judges also awarded Six Senses, Zighy Bay in Oman a silver Responsible Tourism Award for employing and upskilling local communities and Costa Navarino in Greece was awarded a silver Responsible Tourism Award for its nature-positive approach.
In addition, the judges commended “ones to watch” with award finalists who are “showing great promise for the future”. This included Pitchup.com, the outdoor accommodation booking platform, for its work surveying 2000 disabled people to understand their thoughts experiences and challenges in accessing outdoor holiday accommodation such as camping, caravanning and glamping. More than half of disabled travellers said they avoid outdoor holidays all together and 39 per cent said authentic photos of accessibility features and users reviews would improve their ability to decide on a trip.
Pitchup has now launched 13 accessibility filters, an accessibility hub and accessibility guides.
The Rest of The World gold winners will go on to be considered for a Global Responsible Tourism Award sponsored by Sabre, which will be announced on 4th November.
They will be competing against gold winners from Africa, Latin America, the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia.
Photo by Joshua Rawson-Harris on Unsplash