EKH improves its green knowledge

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FELIX: Emirates Holidays aims to give customers information on resorts’ and destinations’ sustainability practices that will assist their choices.

ATN talks to Emirates Holidays senior vice president John Felix about the importance of employees getting a green education and offering eco-tourism options to their clients.

How seriously is Emirates Holidays taking environmental issues?

Emirates Holidays is taking the environment extremely seriously, both at a corporate level and a personal level. We're all becoming more aware of what the implications are [if we don't act] and how big the issue is. The most interesting part for us is what we can actually do. We can't solve the problem, but we can contribute quite a lot towards the solution.

What we're doing as a company is getting ourselves educated on the topic so we really know what is practical and what does have an impact. I attended the recent PATA conference on climate change and what was interesting was the number of initiatives that had already been put in place by people within the industry that are not talked about. People assume it as social responsibility so they won't advertise it, but they are doing it.

What else has Emirates Holidays learnt from attending such conferences?

The one thing we have learnt is communication. We are able to provide customers with detailed information that will assist them in making their choices. At the end of the day we can't dictate to them what they have to do, but we can certainly assist them with as much information as possible. That information we need to validate, which means our own guys have to know what to look out for. We need to know what we're talking about.

What green initiatives is Emirates Holidays looking into?

The main areas that we are going to focus on as a tour operator, which we will project to our customers, are conservation and recycling. These are two really critical areas, which involve everything that we do, down to our suppliers, our hotels and featured destinations. They can be understood enough to check and validate.

We have picked areas that we can understand and will present this information back to the customer and say ‘hotel X or destination X has these initiatives in place, we've seen it and thoroughly checked it, it's been sustained and maintained and therefore it's valid'.

Then it's up to them. Do they want to choose destination X or Y? That's their choice, but our duty is to make sure that we present it to them and it's valid.

In terms of what we do as a corporate body, it's very simple. We all switch our monitors off every day, so overnight they're not running; there's no power being used.

How great is Emirates Holidays' responsibility to educate others about these issues?

I think it's our responsibility to educate ourselves so that when we do get into a discussion we can talk sensibly about the topic. So if we are asked to advise or consult we can do it in a knowledgeable fashion. I don't think it's up to us to go out there and teach everybody about it. There's a lot of reading material coming through now on a regular basis from hoteliers, tourism boards, destination management companies and from our own operations internally.

How popular is the idea of eco-tourism in the Middle East?

As with everything else it has to take its time to evolve, but people are beginning to become aware of it and to ask questions. In this part of the world it may be in its infancy, but it's being brought out and talked about and as that begins to happen more frequently it will evolve and become something that is relevant in the decision making process. To what extent I don't know.

Do you plan on working with Emirates Airline to offer carbon offsetting schemes to your clients?

In this part of the world not as yet, but as a corporate body that is part of what Emirates is currently looking at. It will come in because this is all becoming very relevant to the destinations that we fly to and therefore as a company we will start to operate certain programmes that will make sense.

The key is not to do it from a PR perspective, but so we're able to manage, sustain and maintain it over a period of time - so that it becomes meaningful.

Why has the Middle East been so slow to pick up on these issues?

I don't think the Middle East has been slower to pick up anything, because these are issues that they have to pick up in a much shorter space of time than any other regions. We should be credited for that. The fact that we're adapting to it much faster may be because we have people from countries where they are used to doing these things. But there's a lot that has happened here in a short space of time.

What is the next 'green' step for Emirates Holidays?

The next step is to be able to bring these issues across in our brochures and give the customer the choice, based on something that we have actually validated.

The first step is for us to make sure we know what we're talking about and what we have to look out for. It may take us a year to get there, but when we do I think we'll have something meaningful. We wont do it for the sake of doing it because it doesn't help our credibility, it doesn't match our core values.

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