A number of businesses within Thomas Cook Group encourage our suppliers to adopt the Travelife Sustainability System (see the Travelife page for further information). Our PROUD value, Driving Robust Decisions, includes making fair decisions based on our learning. What better way for us to ensure that our decision to promote Travelife to our suppliers is fair and based on our learning than to adopt Travelife in our own hotels? In doing so, we better understand the challenges and opportunities that our suppliers face and can support them to operate more sustainably.

Both Hi! Hotels and our Northern Europe resort and hotel chains are implementing the Travelife system. For Thomas Cook Northern Europe, adopting Travelife was a way to build on an impressive history of commitment to the environment. The company's Sunwing Resorts was the first to be awarded the EU Ecolabel for tourist accommodation in every country of operation. Through Travelife, Sunwing will expand its focus to include ethical trade, labour, social, cultural and economic topics, alongside the environment.

Thomas Cook Northern Europe started this process in April 2010 and by the end of October had already been awarded 21 Travelife awards. Gold awards were given to 16 of our hotels. This amazing achievement was brought about by engaging with all Area Managers to help them understand the reasons for adopting Travelife and the importance of becoming more sustainable. The Area Managers work alongside the hotel staff throughout the season, so they were able to provide vital support and encouragement throughout each hotel's self-assessment process and independent audit.

For Hi! Hotels, one of the first steps was to understand the environmental impacts across the chain. As all 20 hotels have similar operations, lessons learned in one can easily be applied to others. Having subscribed to Travelife in 2008, in 2009 Thomas Cook engaged an environmental consultant to study two of our hotels and identify opportunities to improve environmental performance at low or no cost. Managers at all 20 hotels were also asked whether any environmental topics were of particular concern in their operations.

Based on this, the company introduced flow restrictors and low-flow showers in guest rooms across the chain. We set ourselves an objective of achieving at least a bronze award in every hotel by the end of summer 2010. Two employees were allocated responsibility for helping the hotels achieve the objective and all hotel managers received training.

Although we did not meet this objective in summer 2010, the hotels are now measuring their energy, water, fuel and towel use, and have achieved some impressive reductions. These vary from hotel to hotel, but are up to 40% for water and nearly 50% for energy. One hotel saved 8,000 towel washes over the summer season.

Looking forward, Hi! Hotels will be focusing on measuring and managing waste to hopefully achieve bronze awards for all hotels in 2011. In Northern Europe, the goals for 2011 are for 30 Sunwing hotels to hold awards and for half our SunGardens and SunPrimes resorts to also achieve awards.

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