What is Sustainable Travel and When Can We Do It? With OurPledge and No Fly Travel Club.

okay so oh meeting us now streaming live so hi everyone and welcome to tonight's event what is sustainable travel and when can i do it so we are absolutely delighted to see so many of you here and more of you coming in um thank you very much for joining us and a special thank you to euro news travel for hosting us on their facebook page and bringing this event to an even wider audience so whilst we're waiting for people to arrive and just to get things going um for for all of us on on the panel i think it'd be really useful to get to know a little bit about you um so i just want to invite you all to say hi in the chat um if you just let us know your name where you are in the world and where you would be if there were no restrictions so where are we all dreaming of traveling to where would you go if you had the chance um so yeah if you want to start um that up in the chat that would be fantastic who's going to go first well i can let you know that i'm rachel and i'm currently in cardiff and actually if i could be anywhere i might be back in cornwall where i've just come from today because it was absolutely glorious there but if i'm dreaming big i might go to hawaii hi harriet tiffany hi tiffany amber sorry hi great matey oh you're in cornwall fantastic you're in paris great did i just see somebody's in antarctica no planning a trip brilliant thank you okay so um yeah so my name is rachel i am um hosting this evening together with catherine from no-fly travel club catherine um so yeah i'm the founder of our pledge we are a social enterprise that specializes in sustainability consultancy and support for small businesses including funding via our bespoke pay it forward platform at ourpledge.co.uk so that's how catherine and i know each other and how we have been working together and what sort of spawned the conversation this evening i'll be facilitating the discussion um tonight so before we go any further i just want to make sure that everyone is comfortable and to give you a quick heads up on a few bits of necessary housekeeping i'm like 1000 sure that you're all familiar with zoom because 2020 so but yes please do keep your microphones on mute unless you are speaking just to say again um hopefully you saw this in the event page but we are both recording and live streaming this evening so um if you want there was it will be an opportunity to participate you know you will be able to ask questions um but uh if you feel like you would rather keep your video off to do that we completely understand and you can use the you can use the um option to unmute yourself or you can just put questions in the chat so we'll use either of those functions both are completely fine as i say there will be a chance to ask questions of the panel but i actually think it might be easier on us if we can save those questions till the q a section of the evening so just keep notes as we're going along and also just to say there will be an invitation at the end as well if anyone has anything that they'd like to share if you um everyone here with us has anything that you'd like to mention or promote then that's absolutely fine we completely welcome that so again i'll give you a chance to do that towards the end because one of the things that we like to do with our events is to make them interactive not to position ourselves as the um entire um we don't know everything and you may have things that you want to share and there are other discussions to have beyond this as well it's a it's a live and ongoing discussion for us all and things are evolving and changing all the time so um what we are going to do is create a resource out of this that we will send to you um after the event which sums up everything that we've discussed so it will um give you an overview of the kind of top tips that our panel kind of share with us this evening and any other links and bits of information that we think are relevant and useful so and that will be coming your way over the next week or so after the event okay i think that's everything i need to say catherine um and alice is there anything i've missed great um alice is my colleague from our pledge so she's um supporting me this evening okay so i imagine that um everybody is here for probably the same reason the enforced stasis of the pandemic has i'm sure highlighted how glorious it was to be able to travel and will be again but i also think and i've seen multiple reports actually about how the pandemic has made so many people more aware of our impact on nature on the planet in what we do and how we might do things again as we move forward as things open up and i know that myself and many people i've spoken to are very keen to move forward mindfully and to minimize our impact and to change the way we behave and to be aware of the possible negative damage we can do and to be aware of the pos possible positive impact we can have if we just change a few behaviors and so we are very lucky this evening to be joined by an entirely inspiring selection of international panelists who can help us all to put our thinking in that sustainability space in that mindful space in that positive space and give us their insight to this question of what is sustainable travel and and when and how can we do it so i think actually what i might do no i'll do this first let's let's hear from the panel i think it would be really useful for everyone here to know um who we're speaking with tonight and to hear from you all about your area of work and your area of interest and expertise and then i'm going to ask the room a couple of questions in an interactive format format um and she's heard about the live stream so she wants to be in on it um but yes so um catherine can i ask you to introduce yourself talk a little bit about no travel snowfly travel club um and also i'd love to know where you would be if you could be anywhere in the world and also to hear from you what the words sustainable travel mean for you yeah completely okay so um thanks very much rachel for that introduction and also thank you for facilitating today's panel so my name is catherine i'm the founder and director of no fly travel club we are a tour operator and also a membership club and we curate sustainable travel experiences we firstly do overland trips so all of our trips are flight free um but at the moment we're also doing virtual travel experiences which you can obviously enjoy from your home for obvious reasons that's quite an appealing option at the moment um and through all of those experiences our aim is really to connect guests with local people and with nature so the principles are that we have a low uh footprint in terms of our emissions we create as much positive impact locally in terms of economic impact social impact and our guests come back with a sense of having gained some new perspectives so that might be in terms of local cultures what kind of good positive work is being done in terms of the local environment but the idea is really to have those conversations on the ground and for guests to come back not only with an amazing travel experience but also having learned something new so that's a little bit about me and what i do so um in terms of where i would be no actually i'm going to talk about i'll talk about sustainable travel first so um somebody that i think i don't know if she's here today but someone that nikki knows and certainly a few other people um may know a lady called joanna from rooted storytelling posted an article recently that i thought was a really good summary of what i see sustainable travel as um and so what she'd written in this article was effectively to say whenever we're traveling sustainably we should be asking is this story that i'm promoting or this accommodation that i'm staying in or this activity that i'm doing is it in the best interests of the people who live here and as an extension of that is it in the best interest of the land that they live on and i think that that is a really nice broad way of summing up what i think sustainable travel is all about because it's not just um you know about carbon offsetting or one of these you know individual things that we can do but it's about the whole network all of the different aspects that come together to have a positive impact on our world so sustainable travel is obviously the term that we know and use but i kind of feel that it's not always doesn't always give us the best overview of all the complexities that are involved so i think that little quote kind of sums it up nicely and then in terms of where i would be i think i would be in portugal if i could be um i probably might be able to be but i would still have to pay for many tests and all sorts of things um i would love to be on a train going all the way down the atlantic coast and watching the sea that would be very idyllic fantastic thank you so much and i'll ask you to share that quote so we can put it into the guide that would be really useful thank you um nikki can i come to you yeah sure hi i'm nikki joining from new york city today i'm from trip kinetics and through that i basically help companies tour companies make their tours better for customers by making them better for their guides and previously i was with intrepid travel for five years which is one of the first responsible tourism companies before we were using that word um so just automatically my career responsible travel was always very baked in so now i find myself often trying to make it a little bit more accessible to tour operators is right now there's a lot of pressure to be responsible and there's a lack of education about what that actually means and it's actually quite intimidating to a lot of businesses in the travel industry um and there's a lack of education on the traveler end as well so um you just see both sides increasingly want to do this right as rachel mentioned so my work i focus a lot on just simple small actions that can have a lot of positive impact in both protecting local communities and educating travelers i would say to define you know sustainable travel and i i have to not do that every time but i just feel like now there's so many words like regenerative travels now the new word right but for me i use sustainable travel as a big umbrella term to simply say it's travel that makes a place better and not worse and any trip can have both positive and negative impacts on a destination in three categories mainly so economic environmental and cultural um so i think it's just being aware of those negative impacts that you're inevitably going to have by your trip you can't avoid them all but just doing the work to offset them with positive impacts and if i can go anywhere um i'm puerto rican and my spouse is from the island and his whole family is there and it's been really we've never gone this long without going home so we would love i would love to take him home as soon as we're allowed well we are allowed we're in the us we could do whatever um but when we should go back and that's what we're going back fantastic thank you that's very responsible great thank you nikki um carmen can i come to you sure hello everyone i'm from mayoka i'm right now here in this little island and i run mayoka on foot that is a sustainable tourist company and we do a bit of everything really we do hiking we do cultural tours food tours um and well i think the most challenging thing uh of keeping travel sustainable might be to know that all the businesses in your uh line working you need to know them inside on inside out to ensure uh high standards in terms of sustainability because you don't know how uh the the produce uh what they offer and um it also tends to require a lot of effort in terms of customizing what the the tour is about in terms of keeping minimizing for example the transport you use to keep the carbon footprint as low as possible so it's just these are special efforts uh towards the people you work with and towards your customers if i could be anywhere i don't know if i could choose i've been waiting for a year and a half so i would go to five or ten different places at once if i could but maybe southeast asia that's what i've been lost before just before kovitz started i was coming back from myanmar and thailand and well all situation there is awful at the moment um i'm very focused on on southeast asia i would go to bhutan for example it's one of the places i'm i'm very curious about but yeah whenever that can happen i would definitely pack my my things and book a trip and go fantastic yeah bhutan is a really interesting place they have a very interesting leader i think don't they who doesn't think he doesn't measure things like uh gdp he um gross domestic happiness i've read that and that's what i'm most in love about over the country it's it's a completely different way of thinking and it goes um it ties very well with my values at the moment so i definitely want to see it yeah i've definitely heard of them through the new economics foundation so they have some super innovative ways of being i suppose um fantastic okay so finally we have zakiyah i can't see you on my screen but you are there yes you are zakiah can i ask you the same questions hi yeah i'm here i also have a crazy cat here um who's not as well behaved so nobody's being mistreated it's just that she's having one of these days if she goes um a bit mental but um so my name is zakia i'm based in edinburgh in scotland um and i found it and run a social enterprise called invisible cities we train people who have experienced homelessness to become walking tour guides of their own city and we offer those tours um as a way to raise awareness around issues that are close to our hearts so social issues homelessness addiction mental health and but there's also a way to give people a voice people who often haven't felt that their voices have been heard and create a connection between our guests our customers and our guides so we run tours in edinburgh in glasgow in scotland but also in york and manchester in england with plans to launch in cardiff soon so you'll be able to come on a tour very soon and and other places throughout the uk and then why not one day um throughout the world so for us and for me in particular um it's very important that tourism can be as can be used as a force for good but also that everybody is included in tourism in cities like edinburgh for example we talk a lot about um over tourism and you know the fact that certain disadvantaged communities do not get the benefits um or the good sides of tourism and of offloads of people coming through so you know we often talk about affordable housing but also where the money is going and how do people that we may not necessarily think about how can they also be part of that and connect with that how can they be part of that connection of that um sector and that conversation and so maybe it's working in the places um that work directly with tourists and also economically receiving the benefits of being in a city that is attractive to tourists and and also what's very important to me is that when we travel so whether that's personally author invisible cities we see the real faces of the cities and the places that we go to and so you know a glasgow or may have a certain image edinburgh is you know it's a city i fell in love with 12 years ago and when i was here on the placement for work never to return to my um home in france but you know so it is magic it is beautiful but it also has issues like every places in the world have and i think it's important that people are aware of what those issues are because and they are not only just seeing an idyllic side of it they are of course you do want to see the beauty and and and the castles and all of that but so that we can have a reflection and we can have a think about what kind of actions we can take to to fight a certain issue or or what we can do to be you know helping that community and we work with homeless folk with homeless people and that's a very complex issue and and certainly one that sometimes you know people say how do you eradicate homelessness how do you even tackle it or how do you approach it and i think it's so difficult because people have diverse stories and diverse issues that unless we tackle it with little things and little steps then we we shall never do that and i and i feel it's the same with sustainable tourism unless it's the little things that we all do then i don't think you know you can even um tackle the start of the issue so um and in terms of where i would like to be i'd like to be in the south of france where i'm from and i think for the weather somebody in the chat said i want to who's i think it's fiona mary um i'm with you there i would like to be anywhere that is warm because it isn't warm at the moment here and it doesn't look like it's going to be for a while yet um but i'm um in the previous life i traveled a lot to eastern europe um and romania bosnia herzegovina and really really loved the scenery and the people and and the countries and um and i would like to go back there i think it was a very good lesson that i learned that you know when i went to romania for work before um people in my family were like are you sure this is safe why are you going like there's nothing there that you why would you even go and actually it was an amazing amazing trip the first time i went and i feel like again you know places have so much to offer and and i really saw a beautiful beautiful land and beautiful people so and i learned a lot from that experience so i would like to go back um and um and as soon as it is allowed i think i'll plan a little trip throughout um eastern europe on land catherine i think that's you know um which is always an amazing experience i enjoy that a lot more you know taking random trains and and car sharing when you know that's okay and safe um and yeah do that again fantastic thank you yes and i agree with you as you were speaking i was thinking actually there are several things actually that come out of speaking with this panel and i had a chat with the panel the other day and i had to sort of zip everyone up because i was thinking god there's so much to talk about and i didn't want to have the conversation without sharing it with everyone who's here today listening um but what i feel from speaking to you all is that the definition of sustainable travel is broad it can be interpreted depending on where you're going what kind of travel you're doing and just to shift our focus into that space of responsibility of just knowing that there are impacts that we have and that we can make a choice about whether it's a negative impact or a positive impact and whether we see the real place um the other thing i just wanted to revisit because i wanted to say again um and i think it's worth mentioning of you all coming out of the pandemic our pledge is a supporter of sustainability in the meaning of environmentalism but also we are here to support and sustain businesses we've all been through a very difficult time and so there is something to be said for sustaining you guys so that you can sustain the regions the the employees that you have through your work so i'm really really proud to be supporting catherine certainly and to be supporting you all by by having this conversation tonight so that your work is highlighted and that you can have those positive impacts through what you do as well so i'm actually going to share my screen because i thought it would be useful for us all before we kind of dig into different avenues as there is so much to talk about to offer the participants here with us the option to let us know what sustainable travel means to you so i don't know if anyone's experienced this before but there is a let me see if i can share the right screen bear with me one second i'm so sorry i just closed it down oh no somebody sing a song yes it's there right i don't know tell me alice i'm going to look at you and you tell me if you can see my screen great i can't actually see alice i can see carmen but you nodded thank you brilliant so um everyone who's with us this evening hopefully you can do this on your phone if you or your computer if you go to www.mentee.com it will prompt you to use a code which you can see on your screen there and i'd just love to know what is coming up for you um with this terminology sustainable travel as as nikki mentioned but there are lots of different um ways of talking about having a positive impact regenerative travel and so on but what um underneath the umbrella of the term are you interested in hearing about this evening and hopefully some magic will happen and those words that you're typing in will appear on the screen and we can get a bit of a word cloud going uh so that we know what you're interested in magic happening is it i did test it earlier and it worked yes great i'm gonna let janet in and she's not gonna know what's happening here we go social impact locals those are two topics maybe there's more i'll give it a moment there we go awareness local community equity longevity great conscious choice any others i'll give it one more go at refreshing itself okay well those that's a really good ah here we go leave me yes interesting so i was looking for co2 i thought that might come up more specifically public transport the only way to travel great okay i'm going to go on to the next slide oh more more local businesses fantastic social impact is large enough to give me the impression that at least two people have said that which is great low carbon footprint again communities okay beautiful responsible to locals okay so you're all in the right place um okay i'm good more coming in or roughly in the same area great thank you so much okay so i'm going to go on to the next oh am i no not going to let me is it going to do it yes right okay i just wanted to know um as well what are we most interested to learn about tonight so there's a bit of a ranking here we can say other i did it slightly um quickly so hopefully i've covered everything here um but yes you should if you're given uh go to mentometer mendy.com again and use this code it should give you a new um option and then you can use the drop down menu to rank your um choices there and i'll give you a minute oh tips great how to avoid green wash great other okay we'll save that for the q a how to measure my impact brilliant oh how to avoid green wash great tips it's like watching a race tips for being warm okay great great great how to ensure i have a positive impact how to measure my impact great okay i like that how to define sustainable travel is now seventh place because we have to find it so job done she's not normally this well-behaved zacchaeus i have to say okay i will stop sharing that's super useful thank you so much um so that's great because we will as i said be publishing tips so you will have a take away um everyone and um we'll absolutely be talking about how to have a positive impact and how to avoid green wash so good stuff i can take those off the list okay so i've divided the evening into three categories the top um the first category that we've started looking at is the definition of sustainable travel and then how you sort of like work within that within parameters of definition green wash and so on then we'll talk about preparing for sustainable travel because hopefully 17th of may being just around the corner some more announcements coming up um we can start thinking about what we're going to book and how and where we're going to go and so we'll talk about that and then we'll get into traveling right now so um catherine i'm going to start with you and i'm just going to go straight in for that question of greenwash how do we know how do we identify what's greenwash and what's actually doing genuine good yeah so well that's quite a big question yeah over to you i'll just meet myself everyone else can help me out in a minute um i think that the one thing i would say which is very broad but i think is a good rule of thumb is um if people are green washing then they will make sustainability out to be something that is simple and can be easily fixed because that is why they're using it as a marketing tool because they want to be the solution to the problem but i think if you really understand you know the nuance and the complexity of the issue it's absolutely not something that you can solve with a product or a service it's a complete mishmash of different things so if you can see from someone's home page that they're making very bold claims about what they're going to do um or they're just offering up one kind of solution like for example we are carbon neutral and we offset all of our flights but then there's no other mention of any work nothing else that seems to be backing that up with some you know some solid work then i would see that as a red flag because yeah like i said if you if you understand and you're interested in sustainability then you're interested in all the different avenues that that includes so i don't know probably other people have something to add but that's what i would say to kick things off that's an absolutely fantastic starter because i think just looking a little bit under the lid is a great rule of thumb for so many things really particularly with sustainability it can be just that little hook that people use to to get you in and on a certain level it's great that people think that that's a hook because it's like magnifying that you know environmentalism climate consciousness is a good thing but you can't do it by these sort of like flippant measures so um i think yeah absolutely nikki i was wondering if you might have other things to add on on top of that i i do and i feel it's hard to say it without being controversial but i really agree with catherine i almost find carbon offsetting is like a red flag at the surface because i think and i know we might talk about this later but that's sort of really one of the few things you could truly measure when it comes to your impact and so companies check that box because they want to get credit for it and it doesn't mean their heart isn't in the right place but again looking under that leg and doing some more digging the companies that are willing to do the smaller work that katherine mentioned um they know that's not going to get them a lot of press and pr but that shows that they genuinely do care about how their tours affect the local communities and places that's perfect and i encourage and welcome you to be controversial that's absolutely fine i think we probably need to go there a little bit because it's you know um it's interesting territory so and crystal agrees i just noticed that she put that in the chat so thanks crystal carmen zakia do you have anything to add on the green washing aspect of things well i'd say that um obviously wanting to be sustainable it's the beginning and then you know that there's always going to be an extra effort every time you make a choice because you need to look twice or three times before you made a decision so it's just uh once you kind of are conscious and and start getting all these tips that we're gonna talk about then you easily see what's good for you what can be free wash what stays fully sustainable or ties in with your values but you have to put that extra effort so that goes within the the being conscious about it and having the extra energy that it requires yeah absolutely i think one thing that i would add into this is the um willingness of businesses to be transparent i really support businesses that i've noticed more and more talking about their own supply chain you know talking about their um their staff talking about how they work with their partners and actually kind of surfacing that within their their public profile and i think that's um can be quite scary and i think particularly if it comes to um even like monetary transparency then people feel uncomfortable but i do think it's something that businesses are going to have to get used to because it's it helps everyone to understand and to to understand where costs come in why things you know have a price um there's a t-shirt company that name is currently escaping me but you can literally see um where their remissions come from and where their money goes so the cost of a t-shirt is this because we pay these people this amount of money here here and here and i want to say it's called evernote but that's not what it's called but if anyone knows what i'm talking about nikki you've raised your hand please go ahead is that correct just just to build on what you've said i think that's actually a really important point about the transparency because actually if you're doing it correctly you should be embarrassed to put the transparency up because you're not doing it perfectly right like that's coming up with a lot of diversity issues now like people don't want to put how many people of color they employ or how many locals versus expats that they employ because the numbers aren't good but the whole point is we know it's not good and we have to be brave enough to admit that so that we can then publicly track so i do think that's a really important point you brought up of like the transparency is like bravery in a sense for sure and leading the way by and actually um by admitting that we're all doing it but poorly you know like like as we've noticed there's so many complexities here and i think we all have to like hold our hands up and um and say you know like we can't do it perfectly but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it at all you know as zacchaeus said we have to do um small things so zakia i can see your hand is raised please go ahead yeah following the example i think the honesty of um raising those issues and and that transparency is so important and i think sometimes it also breaks down some of the misconception that we may have around with a company or even a way a t-shirt to go back to the example is produced because if it's an area that you don't know you might think oh it's supposed to be like that but actually it's a part of the educational process and i think that's why it's so so important so you know how do we pay guides is that fair um how does that compare to other sectors who are people who are the people you know how what's the evolution process like what can they aspire if they start on that what can they you know um think that they can have in a few years time because i think sometimes then we just build up scenarios in our heads um that are not true and and i agree with nikki i think sometimes you may put things up that you know you're not quite happy about because you're not exactly where you want to be but i think um having that honesty i think is very very valuable so as a social enterprise we really try to do that a lot when it comes to the social enterprise sector and i find there's a lot of that going on with other social enterprises which is really good because it also enables collaboration because you might look at another organization and be like oh they're really good at that or that's what they're saying they're doing i wonder what it's like and so then you can start you know chatting and collaborating and learning from them whereas i think in tourism if we could all have that too then you know that would enable change and growing really so taking on that example of you know saying i'm not 100 perfect but learning to get there and so that we can help one another for sure and i also think there's a really important aspect to sort of not to say expectation lowering but that you know to be a good environmentalist you start by just being aware that you're a bad environmentalist i suppose and you don't have to kind of um do you know like it's not like um there's a bar and if you don't meet that bar then you've failed you know you've succeeded just by trying and then by trying again and learning and getting better and i think you know there's like this heaviness that comes with climate consciousness and environmentalism that you know these issues are so big and the stories are so sad and actually the stories of the guides that you support zakia and the people that you work with nikki and what's happening in majorca carmen with people that you work with and the tours that you're doing catherine and the positive impacts that they have are such positive stories and you know that you enable people to have that experience and to have that impact um and to tell this as a um as an uplifting movement to be a part of so um i think that is worth sort of um mentioning as well you know this is a this is a great way of being um so yeah um okay so um i'm just thinking about the time 20 to eight and we wanted to okay so um let's talk about some positive things actually carmen i'd love to hear from you because we had a short discussion and i stopped it short so we could save it for this evening but i know that in majorca you have some really good news stories about um how tourism is having a positive impact can you share a few of those with us yes uh sure i'm happy to i'm happy to promote also the island because i think um sometimes it's viewed in a very partial way and we think of my yoke about the the beaches the sand and summer but there's so much more and there's already uh very nice success stories on sustainable travel here in mayuko for instance the well the one that comes to mind and and is quite successful already is cycling there's a lot of uh cyclists coming in in uh the non-uh summer season so out of the season and and that also well that is already something sustainable because we have a problem here on the social uh bucket on sustainability that is that the work is is so seasonal it's not really sustainable for for local communities so this uh tourism would uh come would use uh the um roads that we don't use so much anymore because it's uh we use uh higher and newer roads the the small roads that connects uh two uh and they would cycle on those ones so it's something infrastructure that we already have and is there and is not used so much and now there's a kind of tourism that can enjoy it and would just be based on small towns rather than the city because it's easier to start a path from from the small town and they would stop in the little bars and restaurants along the sierra montana for example that is the big chain of mountains that we have it's a heritage site and it has wonderful views so it's already very successful it has been going on for many years i just looked at the numbers to be able to say something and it surprised me even uh it says that it has we already have and that's before kobit uh hundred and fifty thousand to uh not 150 uh thousand yes uh to two hundred thousand people a year just in my coming to do uh cycling and that's uh tourism very interested in in sports but also would come to palmer and we'll have the the cultural tour and so amazing yeah so that's that's already one amazing thing that it's happening and then we're putting a lot of effort in having active tourism so uh other sports that can be done in this wonderful chain of mountains there's already a lot of diving schools promoting that kind of tourism as well and so yeah so so much fun and excited to be here to promote it so yeah actually you've just said something that i was thinking is interesting as well because i suppose i imagine that the cycling aspect of tourism in majorca was not necessarily labeled or positioned or or done because of sustainability or was it no no i don't think it started that way i think it was the locals would uh enjoy it and then it would come something more uh known as on a national level and then it just happened and and now they realize of the potential and when they have the numbers and when they see how it works and when they see the the great impact it has on on social communities and on economy on an economy level as well that's when they react so now it's uh everyone is conscious and everyone is promoting it but it was just a natural evolution fantastic yeah and that that reminds me of something that you said which i wrote down when we spoke which is about a mature tourist destination sort of learning sustainable practices as it as it goes and it's a real testimony to the potential of anyone or anywhere to evolve and grow um so the only way there's no planet b we all know it and and tourism is is our economy in mallorca and uh the only way to make it forward is to make it sustainable because otherwise we're just gonna run out of resources and it's not going to be a good way of living obviously the environment is not going to sustain it so everything points that way it's obvious yeah fantastic thank you um are the panelists can i are just going to open to you for your kind of positive experiences of sustainability kind of stitching its way into the tourist the tourism experience um i mean catherine actually i'll ask you directly you know obviously you've set up a sustainable travel company you know what was your journey like what were those kind of evolutions for you and um and what have you seen through your your history in travel because i know you've worked in travel for a while now and so you've kind of seen this evolution and and have like carmen saying recognize that this is the future so uh tell me a bit a bit more about that yeah sure i mean it's interesting actually because i feel like it's the the journey that my career has kind of taken mirrors a bit what carmen was saying about the destination you know you kind of you start with you know you just do what you want and i was working in a in a student travel company which happened to be a rail travel company but i wasn't doing it you know because of the environmental benefit of that necessarily it just was a job that i fell into and i i ended up you know getting really involved in rail travel and and finding that it was a cool way to travel similarly to what carmen said like the locals enjoyed cycling so they just did it and then it became a thing same with me and and train travel i just started to enjoy it and then towards the end of the time when i was working there i was having this nagging feeling that we're not really maximizing the potential of this because it's such a it's clearly a more sustainable way of traveling but because we were student focused travel agency we weren't really digging into that and i in the end got frustrated and i also moved to intrepid which is how i know nikki and through working for intrepid i obviously became aware of all the ways that you can use travel as a force for good and not just you know in in the sense of offsetting your flights or your activities but also in engaging with destinations like majorca or like wherever it is to find solutions locally which you can bring people to and then amplify because a lot of the things that you know we're concerned about they're issues that everywhere faces and tourists come to a destination and they're sort of looking you know as if they're outsiders but realistically most places are facing the same issues back home so if you can bring people to a different place they see with fresh eyes a solution that somebody else might be might be having like for example you know encouraging cycling tours or whatever then maybe they'll take that back home and they can apply it where they live so i started to feel that you know this way of of traveling is not just a it's not just encouraging sustainable travel it's actually just encouraging a better way to to live and to do things generally so um that was why yeah when the pandemic happened i felt that i i had these two kind of areas that i could bring together and that both of them were really you know natural partners because why would we make positive impact in the destination but fly 3000 miles to get there it doesn't make sense to me so that was the reason why i thought you know why not use this opportunity to kind of have a reset and then come back to it with fresh eyes and think yeah why not go by train why not invest in local economies why not do things in a in a slower and more responsible way i don't know if that answered your question that was a bit of a ramble it does no it does and actually it um it sort of brings me to a point that i just to pick up on nikki's um controversial sort of tip like what about flying i mean we've all spoken about places we'd like to go i mean i so i'll use myself as an example i have family in the states i am going to have to fly to get there maybe i should not put you on the spot for this catherine i'm going to come to nikki but what how do i manage that because i think it's something that's going to come up for everyone when we think about sustainable travel it's like oh but i kind of want to go to a place that's like far away yeah and i mean that's why i really that i try and go by more simply positive and negative impacts because i try really hard i don't always succeed i try really hard not to shame people for their style of travel um you know if you only this is more specific to the us than anywhere else in the world that if you only have one week off the entire year um and you only get to go to europe once you know you do want to visit 12 cities in five days and you can only do that currently through a bus if you're not comfortable with driving and um a bus tour is easily accessible to people who aren't you know the people on this call were most likely a certain kind of traveler and that is not the average traveler so we're in a very small bubble so i i want those travelers to feel included in that so i do think it's important to me to say like look if you have to lie fine but then maybe you're going to offset that right by okay that's an environmental negative impact so maybe you're gonna make sure you i don't know that you only take public transportation once you get there um to offset that and is it equal maybe not but it's just that consciousness of what else can i do or okay maybe environmental there's no way i can do it but i can do cultural things right i can book a local tour guide who and they give a tour where they go to visit i know mayan women who are making textiles you know whatever it is that you can like mix and match those categories i always give the example i was cancelled due to the pandemic but i was due to take my very first international vacation with my in-laws um and my my family and it would have been you know them me as someone who works in travel and them as um my spouse's siblings who have never been to europe so they wanted to see the eiffel tower they wanted to see sagrada familia and i learned very quickly that i couldn't be like i'm not going to the eiffel tower like that's snobby dear and i mean like they've never seen it they should get to see it and his parents wanted to put everything on their credit card points which meant we had to stay at hotels that they could use the points on so there were all these limitations but it was a really interesting experiment to say okay to those things but then say okay but when we see sagrada familia we're going to book a private local guide and we're going to see even if it costs a lot more money we're going to pay to see it off hours or you know whatever it was going to be we're going to book you know barcelona fine we're going to book on local food tours with the company that i know is locally owned it's just i think we do need to bend because then i think no one will want to take this journey with us if we have these very strict rules so i'm all about balancing it fantastic thank you and katherine i can see you nodding again i feel badly that i cut you off i didn't know if you had anything else that you wanted to add no i just i agree with nikki and i and despite the fact that i've set up a company that doesn't do any flights i also don't i don't agree with telling people that they should never fly again and that's kind of not what i'm about for setting up the company it's purely to offer the option yeah and fully appreciate that you can also you know you can have a positive impact in other ways and as nikki said you don't being exclusive is not the way to bring people with you and to have a big impact i think we do need to bring people with us so yeah shaming is not the way to do that but i hope it's a positive you know providing a positive option is a good way to add extra things that people can do absolutely and i feel like with no-fly travel club what you're offering is like it builds in everything that nikki's mentioned in that you automatically just to give people a window on what catherine does but your your tours are already set up so that the um experiences are local the food is local the um yeah what you're the way that you travel is has a lower impact and to remind people that train travel is quite glorious and and a very enjoyable way to to navigate and see new places slowly you know i forgot about the term i had had forgotten about the term slow travel until we were talking about this and somebody i spoke to said oh slow travel fantastic you know i've been a fan of that for years and i thought yes slow travel you know again the pandemic has kind of woken us up to maybe take you know things can take some time and that's okay so um great thank you so much um i think one of the things that came up in the mentee meter um was about um the you know and we've just touched on in what nikki said and and carmen and catherine and i want to come to sakia because like really you are looking at localism from a really specific and unique perspective from the true and sort of um i guess fully three-dimensional stories of people who come from a place and have experienced a place do you want to talk a little bit more about that and what positive impacts you've seen from your work with invisible cities um yeah i think we so what we do and and what we try to always promote and highlight is that everybody has a different story and everybody ultimately is different from one another but is exactly the same too and and i think there's a lot of beauty in that and unless so for me you know my experience before setting up invisible cities was i worked with another organization called the homeless world cup and um so using football soccer and to support people who were homeless and as somebody who has absolutely no interest in sports in general or football in particular and my role was very to very much to focus on stories and to listen to people and hear why they at one point in their lives needed support and and how sports was helping them and what else could help them so it was a very privileged position to be able to travel from place to place places like romania bosnia you know but also mexico indonesia and hear those stories and realize that of course it's very different to be homeless in scotland than it is in mexico but at the same time everybody had the same feelings about it you know they felt like maybe at one point they were ashamed and at one point they were stigmatized but at the same time they had loads of skills to offer and loads of positivity loads of dreams and loads of funny stories and i thought you know this is my privilege to be in that job but if it wasn't my job and i would just be traveling to those places without having to do that i would really be missing out on all those stories and starting from this um i think realization is what led to creating invisible cities and so it's putting those stories first and those skills and those motivations and then at the end of the day saying people are just people and we should treat them as such which is very relevant when you talk about homelessness and but also about everything else you know whether it's the person who works in the five-star hotel that you're going to or whether it's you know the customer if you do work in that five-star hotel or whatever and internally we use it a lot when we work together because we have a varied group of people with different experiences and coming from loads of different countries sometimes and even internally like you know some of our guides between themselves may have stigmas and misconceptions and you know sometimes comments that are not quite nice and and so we do a lot of work when it comes to being respectful and understanding and and all of that and i think all of those values we try to put on our chores and some recently somebody asked one of our guys do you really enjoy working with other people who have the same experience as you you've also um experienced homelessness and he said no not really he said it really depends because some people are nice and some others are not it was like it's it's like working with anyone i really like some folk and i really don't like others and i thought this is actually the best answer because he always goes back to this core and which is you know it's not all great because we've all experienced homelessness um but obviously so we work a lot on confidence building and using all the skills that you need to be a guide you know public speaking body language being a leader of a group whether it's two people or 25 people um and embarking on that journey of having that confidence to do that and and we have a lot of people who when we meet or you know at first can't look at anyone in the eyes and are like no i can never be a guide i can never lead on a tour and and then slowly by doing by doing it end up being great public speakers and great representative of their own communities and we have great examples in all of our cities for example poll in edinburgh is um somebody who is homeless maybe 10 times throughout his life um but now you know is employed near full-time by invisible cities but also by now he's not employed but he works with the edinburgh poverty commission so he gives his opinion on things and he speaks publicly at events and often says you know if you told me that two years ago i would have thought that you were mad because i would have never seen myself in that position but it doesn't need to be that big it can just be you know people who embark on the journey do the tours and enjoy that connection with the guests and that change and that does change people's lives and i think that's what i try to say as the person who maybe sits a little bit on the outside and runs the organization it is very important because it brings people you know um validation in what they do and all their efforts and hard work but also understanding that others are there to support them a great example of that is sometimes when i do talks or when i am and i have to say it's a lot of american companies or organizations will often ask is it safe to do a tour with invisible cities because will you take me into a dark alley where it's quite unsafe to go or in a neighborhood where really i shouldn't really go and i always flip the question by saying that the person who feels quite unsafe when they start is the guide because when you're on the street you get spot on you get kind of pushed about and people kind of mock you and in a lot of cases when our guides first deliver their first tours they're very nervous around what peop what guests and customers are going to say to them and if they are a no-show for example which we know happens it happens with everything then they often think it's because people were not that bothered about them and didn't want to do the tour with them and so it takes a lot of reassuring to say people wouldn't pay a ticket people wouldn't give you two hours of their time if it was to make fun of you you know so i think it's um as simple as bringing that confidence and that dignity to people or as complex by providing you know more economical empowerment and of course helping people into housing and into careers you know and into going back to college full-time which has happened with with a lot of trainees and a lot of guys fantastic i i love the example you gave of um the honest response because that speaks again to transparency because i do feel like if somebody is honest even if it's maybe not exactly what you're expecting to hear that engenders a sense of trust i feel you know like i feel like i trust that guide you know he's going to tell me what he thinks and therefore that's going to be reliable and so i i enjoy that as a kind of a little metaphor for the transparency discussion we're having so i'm assuming that people could come on an invisible cities tour now yes yeah you can in every in all our cities it was the case um in england a little bit before scotland yeah and but now we're limiting to small groups and small parties but um also opening that up and and you can also come on a virtual tour and with invisible cities which has been a challenge because technology is not our biggest strength but you can now do a live stream tour so you zoom again um but also different online platforms to do it mostly in scotland because that's dependent on the guides abilities and you know whether they take up technology learning and skills or not but we're hoping that this year by the end of the year you'll be able to go on a virtual tour in all of our cities and definitely on a face-to-face tour um already so yeah great well that's a teaser for something we're going to come to because i do want to talk about virtual tours um but i just think in advance of the next sort of um wave of announcements that we're expecting we're anticipating and i'm just going to open this up to um catherine carmen and nikki what what can we start doing now like what what should we have ready like i mean let's assume we already want to go somewhere else as soon as possible what can we be doing now to kind of get ready for that to be um setting ourselves up for like a mindful trip and to make sure that we don't just get like super carried away and book something without like checking ourselves so anyone can jump in on that because um it's a broad question but i think i can i can just feel in so many people i speak to this like hunger to go somewhere and i feel like okay let's just pause and think and what would you say is that little checklist catherine yeah i mean i would say that there is a temptation just to kind of jump back in and think right i need to make a split just split session second decision because the government's going to change the advice and i'll just hop on a flight tomorrow and i'll go to a beach resort and that will be something that is easy and you know i won't have concerns while i'm away but i guess i would say i mean i don't think there's any way to get away from the uncertainty at the moment whatever type of travel you book you are going to face obstacles even if you go to a green country or whatever it is that the government decides to change to next week and they there are a number of hurdles that you need to go through you need to have your pcr test before and it's quite a lot of expense so if you know if if you feel that you would like to be more mindful and you would like to use this as a chance to kind of reset then if what you want to do is is change where you put your money and your time and your resources then maybe use this time to book something for next year or you know sometime in the future which will give you time to think about have some time to save up probably you only have to put a deposit down for now so you don't need to invest so much in it and then you can really do the thing that you want to do and you can start looking forward to it and you can commit to doing it because i think you know we all like to have something to look forward to and at the same time it's just good to have put some money towards something that you believe in and feel that you know that's what i want to do and i've booked it now so even if it's a year away i've got that commitment in my diary and and obviously things like the campaign that we're running with rachel is a really good kind of risk-free way to do that because um if you go to upload this website you can buy a voucher for travel and you don't need to you know confirm the dates and things like that and then you can just redeem it within two years so if there were more things like that i feel like that would help more people to kind of make the commitment because i do understand the uncertainty at the moment but i would add the caveat that the uncertainties everywhere so you might as well be uncertain about something you believe yeah here thank you i think that's very true and um and yes i will echo that invitation to um look at our pledge.code at uk because

we are supporting catherine with a campaign whereby you can buy a voucher now and and the um the my understanding is that as soon as restrictions are changed and you feel confident that what you're offering will um be plausible and possible people can redeem their vouchers at any point right catherine yeah great carmen how about um if we want to come to majorca or what should what would you recommend that we do now as we start to plan our next phase of travel well um anyone that wants to travel i'd say now that is still uncertain if they want to train their sustainable mentality and mindset would be to travel locally at least for now that's uh obviously always going to have a good impact and there's so much rentals that we already don't know and so it's it's good to be a local tourist tourist for for a while i'm doing that in in spain at the moment so uh and whenever that's possible uh yeah just to spend maybe this time of excitement about traveling to explore what you could do in the place for your your desired destination and see what's there that is of your interest but it's also sustainable so do the little research on on on the company or the places you want to visit or if you don't have that much time available because maybe you're working and and your lifestyle hasn't changed much uh you could attend one of the uh you could visit catherine and and have a trip arranged by her so any um agent that is uh focusing on this kind of products will save you so much time and still point you in the right direction so your trip is meeting all this uh taking all the boxes and and you're ensuring that you're sustainable from from the beginning fantastic and in the meantime we can all practice cycling so that when we come to miyoko we can do something tour it's it's tough if you want to go to the mountains so you have to continue right the mission starts now that's right great and nikki what would you say i a thousand percent agree with carmen and local travel that's it's so important and tour operators guides are really hurting financially right now and there are some places in this world that are not going to open anytime soon and they are places like italy where there is zero domestic market for tours um so in those places i mean like carmen said you'd be surprised i back in my tour guiding days i used to run a tour of times square and it was always my goal to get new yorkers on the tour so i said just try it just try it because you know when you're a local you never like you can actually go back to the places that are recommended you can actually use the tips and tricks that a tour recommends so i would recommend you know looking up your local tour company even if they say they only you know do tours in english they'll speak the native language like book a local tour of your own city and just help out the tour grids and i promise that it'll be fun and also virtual tours and that's like another area greenwashing isn't the word but it's it's really across the board how much money guides are actually making from those so that's a whole other topic but that is a great way to support guides right now and moving forward because i i'm a huge fan of virtual tours because guides are so limited in their pay earning capacity because they could only be in one place at one time and virtual tours is just a slowly opening door to more futuristic ways of traveling um you know audio tours and pre-recorded tours that i think it's going to really help guides in the long term to to make a lot more money yeah absolutely can you just um kind of expand on the term virtual tour like zacchaeu you gave us a bit of an insight there but what like if i let's say i'm going to go on a virtual tour what does that mean so there here's the thing with virtual tours right now it's brand new to the tours and activities sector right it's existed for a very long time in the virtual reality world but for us it's very new and you have companies most companies that have done it as a reaction to the pandemic so what are companies that are not set up for technology necessarily as the kia said you're dealing with guides who are not usually tech savvy it is a totally different skill set um so it ranges in quality and production value from you know companies you could do it in i've taken amazing zoom tours it's not to say those aren't great but that's one end of the spectrum right a guide using zoom and screen sharing and then the other end of that spectrum you could say you have amazon explorer who were doing their trips before the pandemic this has been in development for years and you know it's amazon so there's that cav

2021-05-26 15:27

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