BEST TOUR OPERATOR
Winner: Intrepid
Travel, Australia, which runs small-group adventure holidays in
Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, North America, The Middle East,
Antarctica and Australasia.
Highly Commended: Wilderness
Scotland, Scotland, which runs walking and adventure holidays
throughout the highlands and islands of Scotland.
BEST LARGE HOTEL (more than 50 rooms)
Winner: Orchid Hotel,
Bombay, India (00 91 22 2616 4040). This five-star, 245-room hotel next to
Bombay airport describes itself as “luxury with responsibility”. It has
introduced numerous innovative energy-efficient schemes, such as reusing all
discharged water, adopting a “zero garbage” policy and using aerators and
flow restrictors in all taps, which the hotel says reduces water consumption
by 50 per cent.
Highly commended: Hotel
de la Paix, Siem Reap, Cambodia (00 855 6 396 6000), a boutique
hotel that supports a number of local organisations which provide training
and education for young Cambodians.
Bedruthan Steps Hotel
, England (01637 860555), an eco-friendly hotel in
Cornwall, which offers 10 per cent discount to guests arriving by public
transport.
BEST SMALL HOTEL (fewer than 50 rooms)
Winner: Il
Ngwesi Community Lodge, northern Kenya (00 254 64 31405). This
is an eight-room luxury lodge on the edge of the Mukogodo Hills. It is
co-owned by 634 Masai households, who share 40 per cent of the profits, and
has become Kenya’s flagship community-owned lodge, providing the inspiration
for socially responsible tourism initiatives throughout East Africa.
Highly commended: Posada
Amazonas Lodge (00 51 1 421 8347), a community-run eco-lodge in
Peru’s Amazon rainforest, which supports forest and wildlife conservation
and research.
Sukau Rainforest Lodge,
Malaysia (00 60 88 438300), an eco-lodge in Borneo’s jungle.
BEST MODE OF TRANSPORT OR INITIATIVE
Winner: Bittern Line
Community Rail Partnership, (0845 6007245). This is a UK-based
partnership between the rail industry, local authorities and other national
organisations (such as the National Trust and RSPB), which has encouraged
drivers to switch to public transport in the North Norfolk Area of
Outstanding Natural Beauty. It has promoted linkage between rail services
and local bus services.
Highly commended: SolarLab,
UK (020-8962 9425), a design company that has developed transport
initiatives that use solar energy, from solar boats to photovoltaic- powered
rickshaws.
First Choice
Airways (0870 850 3999), is one of the few
airlines that has disclosed data on its environmental impact and provided
targets on how it intends to mitigate it.
BEST IN A MOUNTAIN ENVIRONMENT
Winner: Whistler
Blackcomb Mountain Resorts, Canada (001 604 932 3434). British
Columbia’s premier ski resort has produced an environmental management
system that addresses land stewardship, waste reduction, water quality,
conservation and energy management of mountain areas. The report has become
the guiding document in the industry. The company runs a car-pooling
programme that has cut C02 emissions substantially.
Highly commended: Ski
Club of Great Britain’s Respect the Mountain Campaign (020-8410
2000) has raised awareness among skiers, snowboarders and the UK snowsports
industry about climate change and the impact it will have on the mountain
environment.
World
Expeditions (020-8870 2600), a global
adventure travel company that has pioneered porter protection in mountain
environments, particularly in the Himalayas and Andes.
BEST IN A MARINE ENVIRONMENT
Winner: Wakatobi Dive
Resort, Indonesia (00 62 361 759669). A luxury dive resort on
the island of Onemobaa in the Wakatobi archipelago in southeast Sulawesi,
which has developed a grassroots conservation programme. Every guest pays
£5, which goes towards a reef- management programme, which the company set
up with the local villages to establish reef sanctuaries and encourage
small-group dive ecotourism as an alternative to fishing. In the ten years
since it was founded the scheme has helped to protect 12km of seagrass beds,
mangroves and reef tops.
Highly commended: Basata
Ecolodge, Egypt (00 20 69 500481). This ecolodge of tents,
bamboo huts and mud-brick houses employs Bedouin and has set up an NGO to
manage solid-waste management in the Gulf of Aqaba.
Dyer Island Cruises,
South Africa (00 27 82 801 8014). Promotes awareness of the effect of litter
on marine wildlife and sea birds.
BEST FOR POVERTY REDUCTION
Winner: Ol Malo Trust,
Kenya. Book through Tribes
(01728 685971). A community charity run with the Ol Malo Eco Lodge on a
previously overgrazed cattle ranch in Samburuland, northern Kenya. The trust
has helped to transform it into a conservation site, establish water sources
and organise health clinics and surgical camps. The trust’s eye
project has helped to eradicate trachoma in the area, where it affects
more than 82 per cent of adults over the age of 30.
Highly commended: Guludo
Beach Lodge, Mozambique (01323 766655). An exclusive eco-lodge
that is pioneering the adoption of the principles of fair trade in an area
of extreme poverty.
Shinta Mani Hotel and
Institute of Hospitality, Cambodia (00 855 63 761 998), an
18-room boutique hotel in Siem Reap, which helps fund local community
projects.
The Blue Yonder,
India (00 91 92 8722 0333), a tailor-made travel company that has helped to
raise funds to regenerate a dying river in the southern state of Kerala.
BEST FOR A PROTECTED AREA
Winner: Napo Wildlife
Centre, Ecuador. An upmarket eco-lodge that is helping to
protect the lowland rainforest of Yasuni National Park — a Unesco Biosphere
Reserve in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The lodge is jointly owned by a team of
biologists and the local Anangu community, who use their share of profits
primarily for education and healthcare.
Highly commended: Damaraland
Camp, Namibia (00 27 11 807 1800). A small community-run camp
that has ensured the survival of the Torra Conservancy — one of Namibia’s
first protected wildlife areas.
BEST FOR CONSERVATION OF AN ENDANGERED SPECIES
Winner: Tswalu Kalahari
Reserve, South Africa (00 27 53 781 9234. A conservation
project at the foot of the Korannaberg Mountains, 300km northwest of
Kimberley, which has helped to restore 1,000sq km of the Kalahari savannah.
It has reintroduced cheetah and wild dogs to the reserve, as well as
tsessebe antelope and mountain zebra, and the number of black rhino in the
reserve has grown from 8 to 24.
Highly Commended: Wildlife
Worldwide, UK (0845 1306981), a worldwide wildlife-watching
travel company that has raised £50,000 for saving critically endangered
species and local communities living alongside them.
BEST FOR INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
Winner: Bicycling
Empowerment Network (BEN), South Africa (00 27 21 671 4655). An
innovative cycling-tour company operating township tours with a difference.
The company uses locally run cycle workshops in the Xhosa community to
recondition abandoned bikes, which it then uses to operate cycling tours of
the Masiphumelele township in Cape Town employing local tour guides. The aim
is to provide tourists with a more intimate experience than traditional
air-conditioned bus tours, while helping to stimulate small township
businesses.
Highly commended: Friday’s
Place, India (01428 741510), a solar-powered eco- lodge in
Kerala, which has developed a hydro- dynamically shaped building that the
owner says is able to withstand a tsunami.
The Trelowarren
Estate, UK (01326 222105), a time-share property in Cornwall
that has installed a biomass heating system, which saves 240 tonnes of
carbon emissions a year.
BEST VOLUNTEERING PROGRAMME
Winner: Biosphere
Expeditions, UK (0870 4460801). A voluntary conservation
company that organises wildlife research and conservation expeditions
worldwide. The company guarantees to spend at least two thirds of expedition
income directly in the country it is visiting, uses local guides, cooks,
drivers and porters, and puts up volunteers in locally owned accommodation.
Significant achievements include the prevention of the cull of 50 wolves in
the Carpathian Mountains.
Highly commended: Blue
Ventures, UK (020-8341 9819), which works with local
communities to protect marine resources in Madagascar, Tanzania, New
Zealand, South Africa and the Comoros Islands.
BEST DESTINATION
A new award category for a resort, village or an entire country that manages
tourism well for the long-term benefit of tourists, conservation and local
people.
Winner: Aspen,
Colorado, US. Aspen is not only one of North America’s top ski areas, but
Aspen Skiing Company (001 970 925 1220), which manages its ski resorts, is
leading the way in showing how resorts can green up their operations. The
company operates four ski areas (Buttermilk, Aspen Highlands, Aspen
Mountain, and Snowmass) as well as two hotels (the five-star Little Nell and
the Snowmass Club), as well as 15 mountain restaurants. It is the first ISO
14001 (an internationally recognised standard for environmental management
systems) certified resort in the US, uses biodiesel in its snow groomers and
offsets all of its electricity through buying wind-energy certificates.
Highly commended: The
Green Box, Ireland (00 353 071 9856 898). A membership
organisation that has helped to develop an EU eco-label for accommodation
providers in northwest Ireland.
Travel
Foundation Tobago (0117 9273049), the Tobago
arm of the UK-based charity the Travel Foundation, which has helped to
facilitate the use of local farmers’ produce by the island’s hotels.
OUTSTANDING PERSONAL CONTRIBUTION
Winner: Mark Smith, UK. Mark Smith is “the Man in Seat
Sixty-One”, the lone inspiration behind the dedicated website www.seat61.com,
which provides detailed information on organising and booking train travel
to the Continent. He describes himself as a “career railwayman” and when he
is not working on the day job (administering government regulation of fares
and ticketing on Britain’s railways) he is off travelling the world by
train. Harold Goodwin, chairman of the judging panel, said Mark impressed
him because “his passion for trains through the creation of his website has
led thousands to discover the potential of this low-carbon- emitting method
of transport”.
Highly commended: Ian Craig, conservationist, who helped to
set up the Lewa Wildlife
Conservancy in Kenya (00 254 20 607 893), which has developed tourism
alongside wildlife conservation with local communities.
Jake Grieves-Cook, who for the past 30 years has worked with
the Masai in Kenya to create safe havens for wildlife at the boundaries of
national parks. Jake runs Gamewatchers
Safaris (00 254 20 712 3129) and is chairman of the Ecotourism
Society of Kenya.
The judges
Harold Goodwin, chair of judges, and professor of responsible tourism
management at Leeds University; Cath Urquhart, Travel Editor, The Times;
Fiona Jeffery, group exhibition director of the World Travel Market; Neel
Inamdar, ecotourism business adviser, Conservation International; Tricia
Barnett, director, Tourism Concern; Sue Hurdle, director, Travel Foundation;
Debbie Hindle, managing director, BGB & Associates; Andy Cooper,
director general, FTO; Frances Tuke, PR manager, ABTA; Ian Reynolds,
formerly of ABTA; Graeme Gourlay, publisher, Geographical magazine; Richard
Hammond, journalist; Justin Francis, managing director,
www.responsibletravel.com.
No judge from First Choice holidays sits on the 2006 judging panel, which
means that this year, travel companies owned by First Choice are eligible
for entry.
Further information: www.responsibletourismawards.info
