High flyers

Dermot Blastland, MD of First Choice Holidays -  Mainstream Sector, tells Susanna Wilson how a mainstream tour operator can do ‘ethical tourism’.

When did you first become interested in championing sustainable development?

Oh God I can’t remember. I lived in Malaya with my family between the ages of nine and eleven, so I suppose that experience sparked my interest in different cultures. From an environmental point of view I’m most interested in simply doing things properly. A rundown, unpleasant environment affects the way people live and makes them miserable. It’s the same for tourists; our customers naturally want to go on holiday to beautiful, well-run destinations.

How has First Choice made a difference?

If I had to say one thing, it’s introducing the customer’s opt-out contribution to the Travel Foundation (www.thetravelfound ation.org.uk), without which the charity would have struggled to get off the ground. The Foundation has worked with the industry, government and NGOs to set up destination sustainable tourism projects, and has encouraged the industry to sit up and take notice of its impacts. If we work together on some things it makes it easier for everyone.

As a tour operator running its own airline, what are you doing about climate change?

First Choice is doing what it can to reduce the carbon burned per passenger on our flights - through simple measures like switching off one of the engines while taxiing around the airport, and using a ‘continuous descent approach’ when coming in to land, rather than circling or descending in stages. In March we’re introducing a carbon offset scheme for customers, whereby an opt-out donation is included in the cost of the holidays we sell. From November we’ll match the money ourselves. But we first need to absorb the cost of February’s projected increased air passenger duty, which could be a direct hit to our bottom line, considering that many customers have already paid for their flights.

Tackling the challenge of climate change means looking at aviation alongside other major contributors too, like construction and road transport. We could do so much more with some real leadership from government.

So how do you square the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions with the increase in long haul travel?

It’s tricky. This is where action from one company alone would not work. For example, First Choice could choose to pay to offset all the carbon emitted by our flights - currently about 1.2 million tonnes of  CO2   a year - and we’d go out of business!

But you’re genuinely ahead in other areas, aren’t you?

I hate all this self-indulgent stuff! What happened is that First Choice recognised sustainable development as an issue earlier than our competitors in the UK. We simply picked it up as an issue as we did with health and safety 15 years ago. Now, it’s clearly a potential differentiator for us.

How do you filter these ideas through the organisation?

We’ve introduced bonus-dependent annual objectives for senior executives and we run tailored learning programmes for our staff. Our products team is trained to encourage hotels - our biggest supplier - to address social and environmental issues themselves. The overseas team is taught to talk to customers about how to be more sustainable on holiday. We’re setting up a volunteer scheme for employees to spend two weeks working on a sustainable tourism project, and then present their story to staff through posters and films.  

So you don’t believe that ethical travel should be left to specialist companies?

That’s a load of claptrap! The great stuff we’re doing within our mainstream business could match the activity of anyone who wraps themselves in a green flag. Every one of our destinations supports charities... and we’re reviewing all the excursions we offer to improve their sustainability credentials. After all, you can be doing all sorts of meritorious stuff in the Himalayas and call it eco-tourism - but how the hell do you get there?!

Susanna Wilson is corporate social responsibility manager at First Choice Holidays. 

12 January 2007

Susanna Wilson