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Sustainability at Inside Travel Group
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InsideJapan Tours is part of Inside Travel Group (ITG). At ITG we believe that our trips make a positive difference in the world and that by choosing to travel with us, you are supporting our destinations and the people who live there. We feel a deep sense of responsibility to the places and people we work with and to the wider planet. That’s why we’re working to maximise the good that travel does and encourage longer, deeper and more meaningful trips that work in harmony with our destinations.
So that’s our mission. But what are we doing about it?
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We're Taking Climate Action
We measure and report on our carbon emissions every year and have a transparent Climate Action Plan in place;
- We measure and offset the emissions from all of our staff travel and each of our offices
- We have year-on-year targets in place to reduce these emissions
- Our ‘Every Trip Offset’ policy means that all our new bookings are carbon neutral – thanks to an award-winning carbon offset programme which provides households in rural Vietnam with clean, renewable energy and a host of social benefits.
- In December 2020, we declared a Climate Emergency and joined the Tourism Declares movement, working alongside like-minded businesses to come up with climate solutions for the travel industry.
Read more about Our Climate Commitment.
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We have a positive local impact
Our trips visit some of Japan’s remotest places, working through community-based tourism to support local people across the country. Our trips are designed around getting beneath the surface – by staying longer and exploring deeper.
One of our biggest commitments has been to Give Back 5% of our operating profits to charities in our branch countries that support struggling families take a well-deserved holiday.
In addition, since 2018 we have enabled our clients to donate over £25,000 to Second Harvest Japan, a food bank charity in Tokyo, by sending their used transport cards to the charity. Any leftover credit is converted into cash in our IC Card Donation scheme.
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We're Travelife Partner Certified
The Travelife standard is the leading sustainability certification scheme in the travel industry, supported by ABTA. Through achieving Travelife Partner certification in all four of our global offices we have been able to systematically review our sustainability and responsible tourism procedures, covering over 150 criteria for each office (that's over 600 in total).
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How did we do in 2021?
Pretty well! We hit 5 out of our 6 Sustainability Targets this year, including:
- Becoming Travelife Partner accredited in all of our offices
- Producing our Climate Action Plan and becoming a founding signatory of the Glasgow Declaration
- Switching our Bristol office to run on renewable energy and reducing our total staff emissions by 65% vs. 2020
- Beginning partnerships with our Giving Back Charities and raising over £2000 on ITG Gives Back Day
You can read our full Positive Impact Report for 2021 here, including our approach for 2022
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What we're working on
We have been working hard to be the best business for our people, customers, communities and the planet, but we're far from finished. Our next aims are to:
- Become a certified B Corp - the only certification that measures a company’s entire social and environmental performance
- Be a fully carbon neutral business by 2025 (we’ll continue to report on our progress in our annual Climate Action Plans)
- Audit all our itineraries on our website to identify where we can make climate-positive changes to them
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Tell us your views
As a travel company that encourages people to fly around the world to visit incredible places (and bring a host of benefits too), we know that just by talking about sustainability we’re opening ourselves up to criticism of greenwashing.
We see it as our responsibility to engage with the challenges we face and we’re not going to shy away from them. We also know that it’s the right thing to do.
We would love to hear from you if you have comments, ideas and questions about our sustainability commitments to help us improve what we do. Just email [email protected].
We’re not perfect and we don’t know all the answers, but that’s what gives us the motivation to get up every day and do better. We’re always open to debate, discuss and collaborate with our partners and our competitors. We are stronger together. And we need to act.
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See our full Policies and Procedures
Policies may sound boring, but they’re vital to ensure that we have a systemised approach to sustainability and responsible tourism issues across the globe, and that we comply with best practice. See our latest Sustainability-related policies below:
Inside Japan UK office
Inside Japan US office
Inside Japan Australia office
Inside Japan - Japan office
