Selling Travel June 19

FOUR-SIGHT
21
Our columnists
Booking flights
with reduced
emissions
could turn into
a USP
WHILE we are all aware that flying is a major
contributor to carbon emissions, I don't
believe it is currently at the forefront of most
travel agents' mind. Ultimately, increasing
sales and passenger numbers comes first.
And to be honest, who can blame us? If
a customer is wanting to book a specific
holiday then they will do it, regardless of if we
agree with the booking or not.
However, as travel agents there are three
immediate ways we can help encourage
eco-friendly travel. The first is to become
paperless. At Venture Travel we only email
booking confirmations, receipts and tickets to
our customers. This not only saves us money
in postage and printing costs but also helps
the environment so it's a great win-win.
The second is to upgrade your back-office
systems. With such great advancements in
technology, gone are the days where you
need to print enquiries, store brochures or
track sales data. Google Docs is a fantastic
tool to share spreadsheets, word documents
and enquiries to everyone in your team
without having to print these out.
Thirdly, promote to your customers ecofriendly
flights and hotels. This is something
we can definitely improve on at Venture
Travel, especially working in such a price
competitive market.
One useful tool I found recently is
Skyscanner. It show flights with reduced
emissions which is definitely worth
mentioning to your customers and be a
unique selling point for your business.
THE ONLINE AGENCY
Ben & Hugh
Venture Travel, Mold,
North Wales
SUSTAINABLE travel is of great importance
to me and has been brought to everyone's
attention, along with other environmental
issues, thanks to the recent protests.
But what can we, as travel agents, do to
improve things, if anything? Should our focus
continue to be just selling the holidays our
clients want or should we be championing
more environmentally-friendly travel?
I find it’s not something clients mention
unless you say something, so I think it’s up to
us to remind them that sustainable tourism
is about visiting somewhere as a tourist and
trying to ensure it makes a positive impact on
the environment, society and economy.
We could all start with reducing plastic in
our hotel room. There is usually a bin in the
bathroom and in the bedroom, both with
plastic bags in – do you use both bins? I only
use one. That means if you're sitting on your
bed you will have to get up and walk to the
bathroom, but just think how many plastic
bags that will save if a hotel has 100 rooms.
That's 100 bags a day, 700 bags a week and
36,400 a year! And that is just one saving in
one hotel. My thought of the month: ‘One
thing you can’t recycle is wasted time’.
I'm just back from Cyprus where I stayed at
the peaceful Casale Panayiotis in the Troudos
Mountains, enjoying its wonderful spa, food
and activities like walking and biking, and the
five-star St Raphael in Limassol, which has a
lovely beach, marina and beautiful gardens
of olive trees. But the best thing was that they
also look after the local cats, including feeding
stations. I wish more hotels would do this!
We can all
reduce the use
of plastic bags
in hotel rooms
THE HOME WORKER
Sandy Murray
Sandy's Travel Escapes
James with
AMAWaterways at the
Hall of Fame
Sandy fruit
picking in
Cyprus
Next month
our columnists
talk about:
Overtourism
and how to help
spread the love
sellingtravel.co.uk