Travelife

Many tourists would like to choose hotels that actively protect the environment and support local communities. The Travelife Sustainability System provides a simple way for our customers to see which hotels excel in this area.

Social and environmental management is such a complex issue that comparing hotels' performance in this area would be very difficult without a system like Travelife. Hotels are assessed on a range of sustainability issues, then may be awarded a bronze, silver or gold award, depending on their score. We then display the award logos alongside the relevant hotels in our brochures, enabling customers who care about sustainability to make their decisions easily. Each year, over a million of our UK customers (41% of all UK customers) and 5.4% of Thomas Cook Belgium's customers now stay in properties that have been audited against the Travelife criteria. In 2010, Thomas Cook Northern Europe switched from advocating its own environmental programme for its Sunwing hotels to promoting Travelife. 36 hotels subscribed and within a few months, 21 won Travelife awards, of which 16 were gold.

Another advantage of Travelife is that it is an industry-wide initiative. This means that hotels do not have to meet different sustainability requirements for different tour operators. Instead, they subscribe to Travelife and work towards an award, which any of the tour operators they work with can then display in their brochures.

Travelife was developed by the Federation of Tour Operators, now merged into ABTA, and Thomas Cook UK was among the industry stakeholders involved in its development.

It includes a suite of online tools available to hotels and other suppliers. These can be used to assess current sustainability performance and identify areas in need of improvement. The tools cover four areas:

• Organisation, reporting and management: including stakeholder engagement and the allocation of clear responsibilities for sustainability issues
• Minimising environmental impacts: these include waste, water consumption and energy use
• Treating people fairly: this covers topics such as preventing forced labour and discrimination and respecting employees' right to belong to trade unions
• Social and community issues: including supporting local businesses and respecting the rights of indigenous people.

Our business units in Northern Europe, Belgium, the Netherlands and the UK all encourage their suppliers to adopt Travelife, and we are working towards making Travelife a Group-wide supply chain management tool. For our suppliers, Travelife is voluntary and although there is competitive advantage in achieving a Travelife award, we recognise the work involved for hotels and provide advice and support with this. We have also trained over 50 of our employees to be Travelife auditors. This means that they inspect our suppliers against criteria that could earn them bronze, silver or gold status and can also provide advice on the changes needed to achieve an award. The three different levels not only give the suppliers a framework for ongoing improvement, they also enable small suppliers to achieve a bronze Travelife award without the prohibitive expense that might be required for a gold.

Since 2007, our UK Travelife auditors have engaged with 414 suppliers. In 2010, in addition to our ongoing work with previously assessed properties, we audited 45 new suppliers. Out of the 414 we have engaged with, 76 are now the proud holders of Travelife awards. Progress in 2010 was less in the overall number of suppliers holding awards than in their progression from bronze to silver to gold. Of the 76 awards given in 2010, 51 were gold, 18 silver and 7 bronze, compared to a total of 75 in 2009, of which 50 were gold, 14 silver and 11 bronze. For Thomas Cook Belgium, 120 hotels in their supply chain now hold Travelife awards. 100% of guests at Thomas Cook Northern Europe's own hotels stay in accommodation that has either been audited against the Travelife criteria or has an EU Ecolabel.

ˆ back to top