MONTHLY UPDATE - AUGUST 2007
Within the past few months there have been a number of significant developments in the prevailing views about the use of carbon offsets as a way of dealing with climate change. The central issues are whether or not offsetting serves a useful purpose and, if so, do the schemes offered provide robust and transparent offsets giving value for money. For the former we tend to agree with the findings of the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee that 'the voluntary carbon offset market does have a role to play both in reducing carbon emissions and raising awareness of climate change issues to the general public'. Our view on the second issue is that many offset services do not provide value for money, do not have sufficient transparency and do not work to a standard we find acceptable.
We have recently begun to support companies using TICOS to train their front line staff (reservations and booking) to help them to respond to questions from customers about the climate impact of their holidays. This has been interesting in that staff responses vary from the totally committed to those unconvinced that operators and agents should ask their customers to contribute to their offset programmes. These discussions are very useful and help us to try to provide the strength of reasoning for action. To aid this process we have recently prepared a questions and answers sheet for front line staff. This will be automatically distributed to all companies using the TICOS service.
A number of the TICOS projects are now entering their last stages of approval and will be ready for operators and agents to support within the next two weeks or so. Those 'pre-chosen' by operators have been fast tracked and there is huge enthusiasm by the project managers to work with the industry. Whilst our due diligence checks have been more time consuming than we had hoped, we remain committed to only signing off approved projects when all of our independent agents have concluded that they fulfill their criteria.
TICOS is currently gearing up its staffing and systems to support two new major initiatives. One of these is to provide a business-to-business service for operators and agents as a part of the ABTA/AITO led programme 'Reduce My Footprint' and the other is to support a national programme intended to engage a large number of tourism businesses in a collective climate change response. We are also committed to providing a first class service to all of those companies who have already agreed to use TICOS.
The next few weeks leading up to World Travel Market and the overseas conference season are going to bring increasing attention on the industry and its role in responding to climate change. TICOS will be making a significant contribution to this debate and the need for common and consistent messages from and action by the industry. We will take a robust position to support all of those using the TICOS service as a part of our wider climate change initiative.
Dick Sisman
TICOS founder
August 2007