Longevity is one of our business objectives and to be a successful business today we need to be economically, environmentally and socially sustainable. For Thomas Cook, that means addressing a wide range of long-term challenges, including providing a great holiday experience for customers while ensuring their security and safety, maintaining a committed and engaged workforce, improving fuel efficiency and monitoring the carbon emissions from our planes; and encouraging sustainable practices in a global supply chain.
MAIN FOCUS AREAS:
Communities
Our future as a business depends on the health and prosperity of the communities in which we operate.Both in our home countries and those where our customers take our holidays, we contribute to the communities with money, time and gifts in kind. In 2009/10, our global contributions totaled over $800,000.
In our home communities we focus our fundraising and corporate giving on making dreams come
true for sick, disabled and disadvantaged children. Thomas Cook businesses around the world help fund children's hospitals, support education, and more.
Here in Canada, we work closely with the Starlight Children's Foundation, supporting them in a number of initiatives held throughout this year. This includes our annual 'Search for Santa' flight, which hosts a group of Starlight kids and their families on a fun flight to "the North Pole," an annual toy drive and the 'Walk for Smiles' events in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.
Thomas Cook also supports cancer research at Sick Kids Hospital through our participation in the annual HeatWave volleyball tournament in Toronto. In the past four years alone we have raised over $30,000!
Environment
Our environmental impacts include energy consumption, resource use and waste, along with aircraft
emissions. We also raise awareness of biodiversity and look out for the welfare of animals in tourist destinations.
Locally we support the World Wildlife Fund-Canada, fundraising for and participating in such events at the annual CN Tower climb and 'The Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup,' which is about removing shoreline litter to help create healthy waters for everyone, including the wildlife and communities that depend on them.
www.wwf.ca
www.shorelinecleanup.ca
Suppliers
As a large company, we have the opportunity to influence our suppliers to help them to improve their sustainability performance, as well as the responsibility to help them do that.
One way we do that is by subscribing to the Travelife Sustainability System. Many tourists would like to choose hotels that actively protect the environment and support local communities. Travelife provides a simple way for our customers to see which hotels excel in this area. Hotels are assessed on a range of sustainability issues, and then may be awarded a bronze, silver or gold award, depending on their score. We then display the award logos alongside the relevant hotels in our brochures, enabling customers who care about sustainability to make their decisions easily.
www.travelife.org
Employees
We believe that engaging and motivating our people will give us a greater and more sustainable competitive advantage than anything else we do. It is therefore a priority for us to encourage employee excellence.
Customers
Without satisfied customers, Thomas Cook Group cannot prosper and grow. From the moment they first enter one of our shops or click onto one of our websites, we work hard to maintain our reputation for great service.
Starlight Children's Foundation Canada
Thomas Cook and its brands are proud supporters of the Starlight Children's Foundation Canada, a non-profit organization that is dedicated to improving the quality of life for children with chronic and life-threatening illnesses and life-altering injuries by providing entertainment, education and family activities that help them cope with the pain, fear and isolation of prolonged illness. More information about the Starlight Children's Foundation Canada is available online at
www.starlightcanada.org .
Thomas Cook Group Child Protection Policy
At Thomas Cook Group plc, we are fully committed to the principle set out by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which states that all children “have the right to be protected from being hurt or mistreated, in body or in mind.” We believe that our employees, customers and suppliers all have a responsibility to promote and safeguard children’s welfare and development. This means protecting all children from abuse and neglect and supporting children and young people to get the most out of life.
As one of the world’s leading travel companies, we recognise that the welfare and safety of children cannot be achieved by one organisation alone; that child protection is the responsibility of us all: from those at corporate level to individuals across all sectors of our business.
To ensure that children are safeguarded, we must raise awareness amongst our staff, customers, suppliers and all partners and stakeholders, ensuring they are well informed and appropriately trained to identify and react effectively when child safety may be at risk.
To achieve this we will:
- Become signatories to The Code - an industry driven responsible tourism initiative dedicated to the protection of children everywhere;
- Publish this policy regarding the sexual exploitation of children;
- Train our people about the importance of child protection;
- Introduce a clause in contracts with suppliers, stating a common repudiation of the sexual exploitation of children;
- Provide information to our customers;
- Provide information to key local people in our destinations;
- Report annually on our progress;
- Work with ECPAT International to develop the necessary tools to help us achieve our goals.
