Carbon Emission Assessment and Compensation
We, at Keralavoyages, understand that travel creates the biggest carbon emissions whether its from air travel, surface transport ,hotel accommodation or any element in travel. While we cant avoid travelling, we take it as a priority to asses the impacts created by our business and communicate to our travelers so that we can make a joint effort to reduce the environmental impact due to travel.
As we are committed to minimize the impacts on Sustainability due to the travel of our travelers, its highly advised to understand the possibilities of the Co2 negation of International flight and connections. Our travelers are requested to contact your airline Company or local tour operator to understand the options to negate the Co2 emissions in connection with your air travel. We will also be happy to assist you on the same, if have a question.
Our partners and travelers have the full freedom to discuss with us on the possible environmental impact on every travel and we can always suggest the best possible ways to reduce the impact and the rest be negated through proper Carbon Credit projects like Tree Planting etc. All our itineraries will be based on a minimum environmental impact and with many compensatory projects already through Community Based Tourism ,Eco Conservation projects and so on. We will be happy to invite our guests and partners to be a part such initiatives too. If we know in advance about the mode of transport and point of departure etc., we can also help our guests to analyze the impacts in advance.
Internal Management-Keralavoyages, as a Responsible Tourism Enterprise, believes in starting the progression towards better Sustainability from home. We will take measures to keep our Management and team engaged in the Corporate Sustainability Policy implementation. Our entire team will be trained suitably to bring in their contribution towards our Sustainability Policy. We will not keep any discrimination among our team or suppliers. We will look into the Health & Safety of all our members. We are committed to maintain transparency in all our activities within the office and in external operational matters.
We have a Policy on Financial Discipline within our Company to ensure Sustainable economic balancing irrespective of Season-Off season imbalances. We will bring more practical measures towards purchasing, travelling of the staff and management members, transport maintenance and driver training on driving quality. We will also bring an SOP on minimizing the usage of power, water and other consumables to reduce the environmental impact. We will implement actions towards creating Green Energy and rain water harvesting to supplement our office usage. We will implement a routine training strategy to our team members to evaluate the progress and bring changes.
We have made strict decisions towards purchasing sustainable products only for our office use especially on locally produced, fair trade, organic, low carbon footprint, eco-labelled, FSC labelled wherever possible and if locally available. We will have similar policy on food, beverage and consumables also.
Product Management-Our products and services have a reflection of our Sustainability strategy to reduce the socio-cultural and environmental impact a tour can create. We will continue improving the same towards better sustainability. Our Itineraries will only be designed and executed by our team members who are experts on the destinations and services. As a policy, we will not offer any activity which is not known to us or creating serious negative impacts to the destination, environment, customers or local people. We will not offer any animal related entertainments and include Sanctuaries or Zoos etc only if run as per legal provisions with a conservative approach. We will not support any Child Abuse, Animal Abuse ,Child Labour. We will continue our efforts on Women empowerment by designing more Sustainable programs which can be run by women entrepreneurs.
We will start working towards a Co2 compensation policy to negate the Co2 emission impact of our products and services. As India is still to develop a sustainable compensation strategy, we will be looking towards the possibility of implementing “Plant a Tree” in our destinations. We will try working on options of reducing business travel towards marketing by adopting alternative channels. We will never promote mass tourism which brings heavy environmental impact. We will do our best to educate the stakeholders in the destinations about the danger of over tourism and will use only sustainable (or willing to become sustainable) vendors in any given destination.
Supply Chain Management-We have a policy of continuous improvement towards sustainability.We will continue the process with more frequent assessment at all levels. We will join hands with NGOs, Government Authorities, other Tour Operators etc. to do joint efforts towards sustainability as the destinations and products are for everyone. Our commitment to make our destinations worth visiting and worth living will be stressed more.
Our aim will be to improve the Sustainability and not to eliminate anyone. Avoiding use of single use plastic will be our priority at all possible levels. We will train our drivers on the importance of making our tours more green by avoiding plastic usage during travel. We will implement an incentive strategy at the earliest to provide cloth bags and refillable water bottles to all our travelers.
We will not tolerate Child labor, Child sex ,bribery or corruption in any area of our operations. All our incoming partners will also be advised to do their best on implementing the best practices of waste management and conservation of bio diversity.
Cooperation with Destinations: We have a strategy in place for site inspections on regular basis to assess the destinations and vendor amenities. We also join with hotels and other NGOs in destinations to conduct awareness programs towards improvement of the destinations. Now we will introduce a strategy for Continued Advanced Awareness Program at Destinations to introduce training for local guides and hospitality staff at destinations. We will jointly work with destinations towards possible types of Co2 compensation and Carbon Credit.
We will implement a project to identify potential employment opportunities for local people at destinations by grooming passionate, needy people to operate Sustainable experiences related to Community Based Tourism (CBT).We will extend our expertise and knowledge towards sustainability to such people and do the needful to link them to Government bodies like Responsible Tourism Mission (Kerala).
Customer Relations: We are proud of our customer retention scale and the resulted repeat travelers. We will implement a strong, continuous and technology enabled system to make our customer relations more Sustainable. One of our team will meet all our travelers at the beginning and at the end of a tour. We will revise our Feedback Form incorporating the Sustainability aspect which is missing at present.
Travelife training enables us to bring in more friendly way to communicate the need of more Sustainability to the customers without offending them. We will edit our marketing content and mailers in such a way to impress them about their role in making a Tour more Sustainable. We will continue offering our customization to bring a balance without losing a business opportunity. When we add a customer, we add a new member to our family.
For more details, contact our
Sustainability Co Ordinator: Mr. George Scaria
Contact: Mobile +91 9447034631
Email:[email protected]
