| Flying the flag for responsible tourism
Explore!
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Explore!
Turtle Conservation
Project, Ghana. |
Based in the UK, Explore is one of the world’s best-known and most
popular providers of adventurous holidays.
Customers from all over the world travel with us on wildlife, cultural
and exploratory tours to over 130 countries. Using a variety of local
transport and accommodation, we get beyond the normal tourist
facade and offer people real experiences of the areas in which they
are travelling. This may involve a camel safari in Tunisia, a trek in the
Simien Mountains of Ethiopia or exploring the cultural highlights of
Georgia and Armenia. It may mean a voyage by traditional Buginese
schooner through the Indonesian ‘Archipelago of the Gods’, a wildlife
safari by bike in South Africa, or a family adventure to Costa Rica.
Responsible tourism and sustainability are at the heart of everything
we do. Travelling in small groups only, we minimise our impact on the
environment, learn about and respect the customs and culture of the
countries we visit and ensure local people benefit economically from
the tourism we bring.
Flight emissions:
Explore are the first sizeable UK tour operator (carrying
approximately 35,000 customers) to start offsetting all emissions
from flights taken by customers and staff.
Climate Care:
Working closely with Climate Care (www.climatecare.org) we have
identified a number of specific carbon reduction projects, which will
be funded by customer and staff emission offsets. We expect to be
handing over a cheque to Climate Care for about GB£300,000
during 2008.
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| Explore! Home Farm Project, Sri Lanka |
An example of one of the projects is the Bagasse Project in India.
Explore is providing exclusive carbon funding for this innovative
renewable energy scheme in Pune (Maharashtra). Waste from
sugarcane production, called bagasse, is being used instead of coal and
oil to fuel a factory. The factory processes waste paper into
cardboard products so it is a double environmental benefit. This kind
of fuel is renewable and carbon neutral, as it would have decayed,
been burned and released all its CO2 anyway. As well as the
environmental benefits, the cost savings from using waste rather than
coal are significant and local employment is being generated in a
poor area. This project gives an economic value to biomass, enabling
farmers to use waste products for economic gain, and kick start
demand for sustainable fuels. Explore will invest GB£75,000 in this
project resulting in a CO2 saving of 12,000 tonnes over one year.
Ploughing back what we reap
1% of the company’s profits go directly to local charitable projects in
the countries in which we operate. An example of a project is the
Mufindi Orphanage in Tanzania where a village is being built over a
number of years to care for orphaned children with HIV/AIDS.
Volunteer tours
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Post-Tsunami 'Hope' school in Pudupattinam, South India |
A new and exciting venture for Explore is the introduction of
Volunteer Tours in 2007. All have been specially designed to ensure
our hosts gain maximum benefit from our customers’ stay. They
could be working alongside poachers in Kenya, photo-trapping
jaguars in Costa Rica or even helping turtle hatchlings into the sea in
Ghana. As well as the conservation-based tours, there are clean-up
tours in the High Atlas mountains in Morocco where an incinerator
will be built as they currently have no waste disposal system.
Volunteers can work at a community-based tourism project in
Thailand or on construction projects in Guatemala where they are
building energy efficient stoves. In Borneo, we take our travellers to
an eco-camp.
Travel with a conscience
Explore makes it exciting for people to give something back to the
world. If we all do our bit, it is amazing what a difference we can make.
It is our hope that if larger travel companies see some of the
initiatives we have introduced, they will follow suit and start to make
the world a better place in which to travel.
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