The Travel Franchise’s Climate Heroes initiative wins industry award

Impactful projects include planting hundreds of native trees along Caledonian rivers in the Scottish Highlands

The Travel Franchise has been named Sustainability Champion of the Year (Large Agency) during the 2022 Travel Weekly Agent Achievement Awards.

The brand has been recognised for its pioneering Climate Heroes initiative, which helps increase native biodiversity, while also sequestering carbon effectively.

The awards were held at the London’s Park Plaza Westminster Bridge Hotel in London with more than 600 industry guests in attendance.

Steve Witt, co-founder The Travel Franchise and Not Just Travel, said: “Sustainability is at our core. We don’t pay lip service to sustainability but create significant, long-term change. The protection of the planet should be one of our top priorities in business and life, so we are very proud to receive this award to recognise the hard work of our team.”

The UK travel giant launched its Climate Heroes project last year and since then, it has raised more than £30,000 for unique rewilding projects across the globe.

Clients can contribute to Climate Hero projects when they make bookings, along with additional contributions being added by Not Just Travel and its consultants. 

“The success of our Climate Hero project, thanks to project lead Rebecca Woolford and her team, also shows just how important environmental concerns are to our clients,” explained Steve. “However, this is just the start as we plan to expand our campaigns to support sustainability and socially responsible projects over the coming year.”

Not Just Travel, which books holidays through travel consultants across the UK, is removing thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it in ways that also improve wildlife, through its partnership with rewilding specialists Mossy Earth. 

Steve added: “There has never been a more important time to promote sustainability and this award shows that we are recognised as leaders across the entire industry. Our Climate Heroes project has proved so popular that members have joined us to train as travel consultants because of it, and people book their holidays through us as they know we can help deliver meaningful change.” 

Climate Heroes is also helping to protect and restore seagrass meadows and kelp forests which sequester up to 30 times the amount of carbon than tree forests.