EU-SWITCH Asia sponsors Travelife auditor training for engineers

Thursday, 25 October 2012 00:07 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Four Engineers of the EU-funded SWITCH Asia Greening Sri Lanka Hotels Project will undergo a two-day auditor training course in Bangkok, Thailand, to qualify as Travelife Auditors.

The session will cover training in sustainability in the accommodation sector, the Travelife audit processes and procedures and the Travelife checklist and its criteria.

Travelife is a UK-based hotel accreditation scheme which is fully accepted and supported by most of the major tour operators such as TUI, Thomas Cook and Kuoni.

Hence, once a hotel achieves Travelife accreditation, its acceptance level among the tour operators regarding sustainability practices in the hotels is well established and accepted.

This type of green accreditation is becoming more important to hotels since more and more tourists are beginning to be environment conscious, desiring to travel to destinations and hotels which practice sustainable consumption practices.

In an interesting study carried out recently by Kuoni, one of the world’s largest tour operators, it was found that some 22% of tourists made their purchase decisions based on how well their choice of destination/hotel practices sustainability. Hence, in the near future, tourism service providers will have to embrace good sustainable consumption practices, if they are to be competitive in the international market.

The four Engineers from the SWITCH Asia Project will therefore be the first locally qualified Auditors for Travelife in Sri Lanka.