Members Practising Sustainable Tourism

Dragoman Overland has supported a number of responsible travel projects for many years but has not promoted these effectively in the past or sought donations from their passengers to support them. In April 2019 we therefore created “Dragoman Supports”, a formal entity to raise awareness with our clients and which will enable them to visit these projects and then make direct donations via a new web system.

In 2019 we will have this new system up and running and ready for clients to make donations to projects included in Dragoman Supports. Over the coming year we will aim to involve a minimum of 500 customers in these tours and we aim for a minimum of 250 clients to make a £2 donation which will raise £1,000.

Dragoman Supports currently includes a total of 21 projects. These projects are either supported financially by Dragoman or are visited on specific tours by our passengers. Each project is selected on the basis that it invests in the community by providing employment and training for local people and enables our passengers to participate and increase their awareness of sustainability and responsible travel. making a direct positive impact by taking part.

To find out more about Dragoman Supports or to make a donation go to the Responsible Travel pages on the Dragoman website or donate using our booking system at the time of booking.

• Dragoman Supports has a mission to
• Support local communities
• protect the environment we travel through
• assist wildlife conservation work particularly with endangered species

Helping the village of Santa Catalina, on the shores of Lake Atitlan , by supporting the Pintando Project which aims to change the lives of the community through thoughtful street art linked to Maya tradition.

• . Make as much money as possible for the project !
• . Help promote the project by introducing as many people as possible to this vibrant destination.

Implement initiatives to reduce plastics in offices and destinations for the benefit of the environment.

• Reducing plastic use in our offices.
• Encouraging tour leaders and staff on FAM trips to lead by example.
• Empowering our clients to reduce their plastic use by giving them language tools to refuse plastic and to prepare them in advance.

Mozambique, is a beautiful country that we at Africa Collection are proud to have worked with for many
years. We understand the necessity to help protect and develop the destination, especially after the recent natural disasters that have had devastating effects and will continue to have long-term impacts.

In 2019 we have therefore chosen to work with the two organisations that are already helping to rebuild this beautiful country.

Firstly, we aim to raise £1,000.00 through fundraising this year for the Disaster Emergency Committe (DEC). This money will go specifically towards their Cyclone Idai Appeal to deliver relief such as emergency shelter kits, food, water purification tablets and urgent healthcare to the affected areas.

We also aim to raise £5,000.00 for a project of the Nema Foundation in Northern Mozambique which helps rebuild the communities washed away by Cyclone Kenneth. To raise this money we will double every £5.00 donation made by a client on a booking to raise the total donated from each booking to £15.00. We will also carry out further fundraising activities such as a raffle and a sponsored walk. The Nema Foundation work to equip rural communities to sustainably eradicate poverty in their villages by creating projects that overlap and reinforce each other, creating stronger foundations for continued development.

The money Africa Collection raises will be vital for completely rebuilding communities and helping them to get back on their feet and continue to thrive. If you would like to further support this cause, please donate here: gofundme.com/africa-collection-cyclone-kenneth-appeal

In 2019, Martin Randall Travel are starting a new initiative to reduce the number of single-use plastic water bottles distributed on our tours and festivals. Currently, we provide these bottles on coach travel for all clients on our tours. In 2019 so far, this amounts to 27,472 bottles.

This year,however, we aim to reduce this by 12% percent thus saving 3,333 single-use bottles. We will do this by asking all clients travelling on select tours from June 2019 onwards to bring a reusable water bottle or purchase a Water-to-Go bottle, particularly useful for destinations where tap water isn’t drinkable, instead of providing plastic bottles on coaches. We will then roll out the initiative across our global destinations with the aim to eliminate the use of plastic water bottles on all tours by 2021.

By partnering with Water-to-Go we are able to offer MRT clients a 15% discount when they purchase a bottle. Water-to-Go bottles are built for life, have zero carbon footprint and filter out 99% of bacteria in dirty water. Water-to-Go will also donate 15% of all proceeds to our chosen charity – the India Solar Water Heating project led by Natural Capital Partners, which provides solar water heaters to households in India fuelled by renewable energy.



By implementing this pledge MRT and its clients will be helping to reduce plastic consumption and waste, thus protecting the wonderful environments we travel through, especially those with limited infrastructure to dispose of plastic waste, and our beautiful oceans.

More information: https://www.watertogo.eu/martinrandalltravel

• Use the code 'MARTINRANDALL' for a 15% discount.
• https://www.watertogo.eu/martinrandalltravel

Following the Easter Sunday attacks in Sri Lanka, Experience Travel Group launched a crowdfunding campaign to provide immediate financial support for the wonderful freelance chauffeur-guides whose livelihoods are threatened by the sudden drop in tourism.

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At Discover the World we believe there are many ways we can take responsibility for our travel and if we all work together we can help make a difference. Avoiding single-use plastic is one of the easiest changes we can make and one that will significantly reduce the amount of plastic waste which ends up in our oceans.

Discover the World is committed to help reduce this waste and in 2019 we are proud to be working in partnership with Global WAKEcup, a local company offering stylish alternatives to single-use cups, bottles, bags and straws. Our clients, staff and suppliers can use our exclusive discount code ‘DTW15’ to receive a 15% discount on any purchases through Global WAKEcup. We will encourage our clients to either make a purchase before they travel using this code and to take their new reusable items with them on holiday or alternatively to take re-usable items with them that they already own.

Our aim is to reach 100 purchases through Global WAKEcup. If each purchase includes a re-useable bottle this would save up to 2100 plastic bottles being used (assuming each person would buy 3 bottles a day on a 7 day holiday). What’s more 10% of the profit will go directly to The Marine Conservation Society, who campaign tirelessly to educate and prevent the devastating effects of single-use plastic pollution on our oceans and marine wildlife.

Use our discount today and help us take action against single-use plastic: https://globalwakecup.com/pages/discover-the-world-partnership

• Reduces single-use plastic waste
• Supports The Marine Conservation Society
• Supports Global WAKEcup - a small, local British company
• Provides clients, staff and suppliers with a 15% discount

We're delighted to have submitted our first Project Protect Pledge in 2019!
In addition to our pledge, we are working on a number of other things to reduce our impact on the Greek islands, a few of which are:

• - Supplying eco-friendly cleaning products on all our flotilla yachts
• - Using bio-degradable cups and bin bags for punch parties and for the boats
• - Our lead crews organising regular beach clean-ups and our guests love joining in!

Naturetrek has been encouraging customers to offset their carbon emissions from flights since 2000, and since 2007 we have been making contributions at our own expense. The World Land Trust and its Ecuadorian partner, Fundacion EcoMinga, use these funds to purchase and protect critically endangered cloudforest in the Ecuadorian Andes. Over the years we have slowly but surely built up our own ‘Naturetrek reserve’, creating an invaluable forest corridor linking the Sangay and Llanganates National Parks. In 2018 our protected area was already 1,389 acres (twice the size of the City of London!).

In 2019, we want to deepen this partnership by pledging to donate £15 for every long-haul flight and £5 for every short-haul flight booked by our customers to the World Land Trust. Over the year we aim to generate £40,000, which will enable us to protect a further 200 acres of cloudforest.

We will also further promote our project to customers this year through our website, e-marketing and brochure. We will encourage our customers to match our donations when they book, in order to increase our funds even further. In 2018 our clients donated £402 to the WLT; we aim to increase this figure to £4,000 in 2019.

By matching our donations our customers will be helping us to grow our ‘Naturetrek Reserve’, both locking up carbon that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere and preventing the National Parks from becoming isolated cloudforest islands, thereby protecting this valuable, extremely biodiverse habitat and its endangered wildlife.