Honouring travel agencies and travel agents across the UK and Ireland, this year’s edition of The Travel Weekly Agent Achievement Awards took place in London and was attended by over 600 guests from the travel industry.
The Travel Franchise was announced as the winner of the Sustainability Champion of the Year – Large Agency Award for 2022 and we are delighted at the recognition of our sustainability efforts across Europe and the rest of the world.
An expert panel of judges from the industry had the tough job of selecting the finalists and we are thrilled to have come out on top. Our co-founders Steve Witt and Paul Harrison attended to scoop up the prize.
But we couldn’t accept the honour without recognising the efforts made by our clients from far and wide, who supported our Climate Hero Initiative, helping to raise tens of thousands of pounds towards environmental sustainability matters.
But what is the Climate Hero Initiative? We all know that travel can have significant environmental impacts and we seek to reduce these at every opportunity. In fact, one of our primary initiatives is undertaking rewilding projects with our partner Mossy Earth. Choosing The Travel Franchise is therefore the environmentally friendly way to embark on your next journey.
For those curious about how the Climate Hero Initiative works, it’s quite simple. Each trip includes a “Climate Hero Contribution” of a minimum of £5 per passenger. (More contributions are welcome but at the client’s discretion). These funds are then allocated to multiple rewilding projects and we keep our travellers informed of new developments through various channels, including blog posts and social media.
Since we don’t believe in “greenwashing” but in genuine efforts to help the environment, some of the projects we’ve been involved in include protecting seagrass meadows and kelp forests in Portugal as well as supporting research to better protect sea otters in California.
These meaningful steps and projects take us one step closer to helping the environment in our special way. And every passenger and traveller that chooses us directly contributes to these initiatives. As a result, we’re very proud of our achievements and their industry-wide recognition and we look forward to many more initiatives in the future!
