No fewer than 629 tour operators and travel agents have been selected this week to participate in the pan-European SUSTOUR program with the aim of improving their sustainability performance. The project is funded under the EU-COSME programme. Industry organization ANVR is one of the founding partners of this project.
At the beginning of March 2022, the project launched a European call for SME travel companies with the aim of selecting at least 175 tour operators and travel agencies that could benefit from an extensive technical support program. More than 730 companies ultimately applied and after extensive assessment by an independent evaluation committee, 629 SMEs from 35 countries were selected and applied for the support program.
“We are delighted to see so much interest from tour operators and travel agents across Europe to learn how to make their business and supply chain more sustainable. We have therefore decided to include as many as three times more companies in the support program than initially planned so that a maximum of companies can benefit from the project."
"At ANVR, sustainability is at the top of the priority list and we are really happy to see that more than 80 travel companies from the Netherlands have been selected as part of SUSTOUR. This makes us the Netherlands leader by far in Europe."
The technical support program will start in July 2022 and will offer a mix of innovative online training, multi-day classroom training, intensive coaching (group and individual) and peer-to-peer learning – all provided and guided by selected tourism sustainability experts. Companies have been given a choice between obtaining Travelife certification support or support in terms of improving specific areas such as carbon targets, plastics and supply chain management or certification of their shore excursions.
Several events will be organized in collaboration with European industry associations to allow the selected travel organizations to exchange experiences and best practices and to reward the companies that successfully achieve the certification through the SUSTOUR project, according to the ANVR.
