Can Prince Harry’s new sustainable tourism project Travalyst make travel greener?
The Duke of Sussex’s bold new Travalyst initiative with prominent companies like Visa, and TripAdvisor aims to tackle climate change, and better protect holiday destinations, communities that depend on tourism, and wildlife
Britain’s Prince Harry wants you to think a bit harder about whether your next holiday abroad risks harming the planet.
The Duke of Sussex helped to launch a sustainable tourism initiative called Travalyst (“travel + catalyst”) in Amsterdam on Tuesday, which aims to support local people, protect wildlife, tackle climate change and environmental damage and alleviate overtourism.
It is critically important to accelerate the adoption of sustainable practices worldwide. Bringing companies, consumers and communities together is our best chance to protect destinations and ecosystems for future generations
It’s a tall order but Visa, TripAdvisor, Booking.com, Skyscanner and Ctrip are collaborating with him on the project.
“It is critically important to accelerate the adoption of sustainable practices worldwide,” Prince Harry said at the project’s launch on September 3. “Bringing companies, consumers and communities together is our best chance to protect destinations and ecosystems for future generations.”
The world is getting smaller for today’s traveller – a generation ago, visiting Madagascar or trekking along the Kyrgyzstan border would have been almost unthinkable. The number of trips taken annually by people has more than doubled since 2000, according to the World Bank.
Tourists visiting countries in emerging markets will make up 57 per cent of all international trips in 10 years, reaching a billion annually, according to the World Tourism Organization.
Yet there are early signs that today’s consumer is growing aware that the act of flying across oceans is not necessarily ideal for the environment. Over the past 12 months, 10 million travellers using Skyscanner selected the lowest CO2 emission flight option.
Tourists visiting countries in emerging markets will make up 57 per cent of all international trips in 10 years, reaching a billion annually
And companies are beginning to embrace the idea, too. Last week, Marriott International, the multinational hotel chain, with brands such as Marriott, Sheraton, the Ritz-Carlton and Westin, said it would eliminate all single-use toiletry bottles from its properties worldwide.
The global sustainable tourism market is predicted to grow by US$340 billion, or 10 per cent within the next four years, according to market researcher TechNavio.
Want more stories like this? Sign up here. Follow STYLE on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter