The company set out goals and targets for 2020 last year, which include increasing the number of people benefiting from its charity and community programmes, reducing aircraft emissions and ensuring its own-brand hotels become more sustainable.
Cook’s 12th annual sustainability report details progress on these targets, with more than 54,000 people benefiting from its philanthropy. Cook wants this to reach 100,000 people by 2020.
Another target has Cook aiming to reduce airline emissions per passenger kilometre by 12% by 2020, compared with 2008 levels. So far, these emissions have been reduced by 4%.
The company also wants all its own-brand hotels to be Travelife accredited by 2020 - 30% of Cook’s properties have so far achieved Travelife Gold Award status.
Other sustainability initiatives include vows to cut plastic use, such as removing 70 million single-use plastics (3,500 suitcases’ worth) over the next 12 months across all operations.
Animal welfare is another big issue for Cook. It audited 49 animal attractions last year, leading to 29 being removed from sale that did not meet its minimum standards.
It said the other 20 venues had “made significant improvements to the way they treat animals” as a direct result of its audit process.
Chief executive Peter Fankhauser said: “Our decisions to remove all captive orca attractions and to tackle the amount of plastic waste we generate demonstrates how Thomas Cook is moving in step with changing customer sentiment, as well as scientific evidence, to ensure our holidays deliver the change our customers expect.
“To become a more sustainable and ethical business in the long term, we must make difficult decisions and challenge ourselves to tackle our environmental impacts.”
Cook has also created a new framework for diversity and inclusion, which is being rolled out across the company.
Initiatives include Cook’s executive committee taking “unconscious bias” training, which is now being rolled out to the company’s top 100 managers.
Thomas Cook’s group head of public affairs Stephen d’Alfonso has penned an exclusive column for TTG to mark the launch of the operator’s latest sustainability report, which you can read here.
