Andante Travels transports many people every year to destinations all over the world and are very aware of the potential harm which tourism can do to the environment and to local cultures. We are very proud to have been a founding member of the Association of Independent Tour Operators (AITO) Sustainable Tourism Programme, and we attach a lot of importance to our efforts in this regard. We have now been awarded 5 Star accreditation, which is the highest level of recognition in the field of Sustainable Tourism offered by AITO.
On tour, we try to make our travellers aware of cultures of the past and present. We want to behave well and responsibly, but the new and varied situations which travel creates can sometimes make it hard to know how to do this in the most appropriate way. We want to be sure that we do our best to minimise the potential negative impacts and to maximise the benefits of travel. Some of these ideas are listed below:
LESSENING THE IMPACT
Every guest who books onto an Andante tour receives “Responsible Tourism guidelines” within our Tour Information booklet. This suggests ways to minimise negative and promote positive impacts of tourism on ancient sites and local environments generally. The guidelines address environmental, social and cultural issues, respect and support for local cultures, bargaining and buying, dos and don’ts – warnings against picking plants and flowers, buying items made from endangered species, picking up artefacts on sites and wasting local resources.
We are aware of the immense privilege that we have as tourists. We strive continually to improve our performance towards promoting sustainability and conservation of our cultural heritage.
We are also aware of our own environmental performance here in the office and try to find ways of lessening our impact. From very basic things, such as using environmentally friendly cleaning products in our kitchen, minimising use of paper in the office, recycling office equipment, toner cartridges, paper and waste products, to carbon offsetting on all the flights for our staff.
We want to involve our staff as much as possible in the formulation of our office practice and policies and we hold staff meetings on a regular basis to discuss Responsible Tourism and welcome discussion for new ideas on how to improve our performance.
CARBON OFFSETTING
Andante’s early involvement in the setting up of the United Nations Sustainable Tourism initiative and also in AITO’s Sustainable Tourism scheme has led us to apply our beliefs and principles to our projects whenever possible. To demonstrate this commitment, we are pleased to announce that in 2010 we will be offsetting all our customer’s flights as well as our staff, using the TICOS Scheme (Tourism Industry Carbon Offset Service). We offset the emissions by paying a carbon levy of £4 per person for short-haul and £16 for long-haul flights. We have chosen this scheme for its admirably low administration charge, which means that the majority of your donation goes straight to a specific environmental project, in this case to a solar energy scheme just outside Tirana in Albania. You can find more information about this under the section entitled “TICOS” on this website and also on the TICOS website www.ticos.co.uk.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL AWARDS
For the past few years we have set aside an annual sum as a contribution to a Heritage project. So far, we’ve helped with:
The website and signage at Volubilis in Morocco – you can see this on our Casablanca to Marrakesh tour. http://www.sitedevolubilis.com
A geophysical survey at Kerkenes Dag in Anatolia, central Turkey – you can visit the site on our Anatolia & Cappadocia tour. http://www.kerkenes.metu.edu.tr/
Didactic information panels for the prehistoric site of Nola, a village engulfed by an eruption of Vesuvius in the Bronze Age – you can visit the site on our Pompeii for Cognoscenti tour. http://www.areanoloana.it
The Stonehenge Riverside Project conducted by Professor Mike Parker Pearson and colleagues from Sheffield and other British Universities - excavations of the classic monuments of Stonehenge, its avenue, the Stonehenge cursus and the Stonehenge palisade, together with a long barrow and a round barrow. http://www.shef.ac.uk/archaeology/research/stonehenge
The current recipient is Via Consolare Project in Pompeii, which documents and explains the chronology and stratigraphic record of properties along the length of this major roadway on the western side of Pompeii. The Project works alongside an annual summer Field School, providing training in scientific archaeological field technique, method and theory as a credit bearing component of the programme in Classical Archaeology at San Francisco State University. http://www.sfsu.edu/~pompeii/research2009.html
Applications for Andante’s latest Archaeological Award are invited before the end of January 2010. These may be for any professional archaeological project anywhere in the world. They should be submitted on one side of A4 only to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . The winner will be announced on 27th February 2010 at the Current Archaeology Award Ceremony in the British Museum.
