Travel overcomes borders and brings people together: the travel and tourism sector creates a vast melting pot of nations, peoples and cultures. Over 900 million people travel every year, making the sector one of the biggest in the world, a major employer and a key element in the global economy.
But travel has its flipside, too. The environmental impact of ever-growing mobility, the loss of coastlines and other natural landscapes to unchecked building development, poor working conditions and sexual exploitation are just some of the negative consequences of the steady and ceaseless growth of the global travel sector.
With over 100 years of business success behind it, the Kuoni Group is keen to constantly look ahead. In doing so, Kuoni has a clear and simple aim: to be the best and most successful tour operator in the premium and specialist segment. In its endeavours to achieve this objective, Kuoni has expressly committed itself – both within its ranks and to the outside world – to being an ethically responsible company, and has positioned itself accordingly. Our groupwide principles of ethical behaviour have also been enshrined and explained in our Kuoni Code of Conduct.
Kuoni is well aware of its responsibilities as a leading tour operator, and works unstintingly to protect the natural environment and the interests and concerns of the people who live at and around its vacation destinations – not just because cultural variety, an intact natural world and stable social conditions are vital prerequisites for a sustainable tourist sector, but also out of a deep and sincere respect for other countries and cultures, for our business partners and for our own employees, whom we wish to provide with a positive corporate environment.
In the longer term, Kuoni strives to make its products as attractive as possible from a value-for-money perspective and as compatible as possible with social and ecological concerns. For the medium term, Kuoni Corporate Responsibility is initiating pilot projects, sensitising its personnel and customers, enabling knowledge transfers, educating contractual partners and creating opportunities to further enhance its vacation travel products in both quality and quantity terms.
Kuoni Corporate Responsibility is primarily active in four strategic areas, in which it has set itself the following four objectives to help improve the performance of the tourist sector in the mid-to-long term:
- protecting children and adolescents from sexual exploitation within the tourist sector
- ensuring fair working terms and conditions within the tourist sector
- improving water supplies at destinations
- mitigating the impact of climate change
You will also find details of our achievements in these areas to date in our Kuoni Corporate Responsibility Report.