Positive Impact
Travel is one of the most uplifting experiences. There’s no feeling quite like being immersed in a new place, our senses heightened by new sounds and sights. Travel expands our horizons and connects us across borders, oceans and continents.
What does Positive Impact mean at Jacada?
From the very beginning at Jacada, it was always clear to us that travel should be uplifting for everyone involved, done in a way that respects local communities and preserves the intrinsic value of ecosystems.
When managed responsibly, tourism can be an incredibly powerful catalyst for change. At Jacada we view Positive Impact tourism as a tool to facilitate an exchange of ideas and perspectives – and preserve culture, history, biodiversity and heritage. The economic benefit generated can also finance solutions to some of the world’s most complex societal and environmental challenges.
For these reasons, responsible travel is something that our team takes seriously. For many, it was the reason they joined Jacada. The concept of Positive Impact travel is woven into our ethos, and into each and every itinerary.
When you travel with Jacada, you travel with the confidence of knowing that your trip is benefitting both the people and the places that you visit.
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Our approach to Positive Impact
Supporting Conservation and Communities
Jacada is a part of the Wilderness family, an organisation which exists to protect, explore and expand the world’s true wildernesses. Through Wilderness, we are playing our part in the protection of 6 million acres (2.3 million hectares) of land, with the plan to expand this to 5 million by 2030.
Our contributions to Wilderness also allow us to be a part of a wide range of initiatives within Africa such as wildlife conservation and research, small-scale farmer development, school curriculum and infrastructure improvements, water provision programs, community enterprise development and student scholarships.
Through your trips, we are also able to support Children in the Wilderness, Wilderness’ flagship community engagement and education impact programme aimed at promoting sustainable conservation through leadership development and education in Africa.
This is achieved in a variety of ways – from hosting Eco-Club programmes at local schools, to running annual camps for the children within the rural communities that live on the edges of wild areas of Africa. More than 7,800 children have been through the program since its initiation in 2001, and more than 600 children are currently receiving annual scholarship support.
As a Jacada traveller, your journey supports causes dedicated to the conservation of wildlife, the environment, and local communities, no matter where in the world you decide to explore.
Natalie Lyall-Grant
Positive Impact Manager
Social Impact Travel: Selecting the Right Local Partners
On your trips, you’ll come across some of our amazing partners around the world. At Jacada, we operate within a global network and we believe in the importance of supporting local business in every destination.
From day one, we’ve favoured smaller partners that are based in-country and we’ve found that we have not only been able to support their growth, but that locally owned businesses usually have a higher level of involvement in their community and a tendency to want to support local causes.
From large-scale reforestation projects and public health initiatives to coral reef restoration and mobilising anti-poaching units, the vast majority of our partners are involved in addressing environmental and societal issues, finding innovative new solutions to some of the world’s biggest problems.
Our team has carefully hand-selected these partners on your behalf and we are proud to work with some incredible organisations that share our values and passion for responsible travel.
Joining Forces To Achieve Global Goals
When it comes to global challenges, we are stronger together. Jacada has formed partnerships and collaborations with a range of NGOs and communities to collaboratively create a more fair and just tourism industry – as well as a more sustainable future.
Here are some of our shared initiatives:
- Jacada’s sustainability strategy is guided by the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which were designed to create a better world for both people and the planet, allowing businesses to align their sustainability goals with global targets.
- We are partners with ChildSafe, an NGO working to protect children and youth living in poverty or prevented from having their internationally recognised rights as children fulfilled. The tourism industry, and associated businesses, bear responsibility to use their power to adopt approaches that not only recognise children’s vlnerability but also mitigate risks that may impact them. Through this partnership, we are rewriting our policies with regards to child safeguarding and providing annual training to all our staff so that we can ensure our tours have only the best impact on children.
- We are currently in the process of implementing new policies on wildlife protection, for which we have sought advice from World Animal Protection, an NGO working to create innovative solutions to help safeguard wild animals from cruelty.
Auditing and Benchmarking our Properties
Our hotels are carefully handpicked. We visit a big majority of the properties we sell, and have recently conducted a large-scale audit to learn more about the individual impact and sustainability of each one to ensure that we cut through any greenwashing.
Our Positive Impact Collection was created to help you make the best choices on where to stay. Those included have been meticulously evaluated and scored according to a rigorous methodology, meeting the highest standards when it comes to their actions for community and environment.
Whilst all of the properties that we sell operate in an ethical, responsible and sustainable way, and the vast majority contribute some portion of their profits to a charitable cause, what differentiates the Positive Impact Collection is that solving social and environmental issues is at the core of their businesses, central to their purpose and vision. These hotels are addressing issues and concerns specific to their locations. Tourism allows them to fund large social and environmental initiatives and help raise awareness of these issues through educating guests, staff and the wider community. Their impact goals are strategic, large-scale and ultimately aim to transform their local area for the better.
By adding one of our Positive Impact properties to your itinerary, you can make a difference.
Committing to Decarbonisation
What can’t be measured cannot be improved. That’s why we have started working with a third-party carbon accountancy organisation, who are helping us to measure our carbon footprint across our entire supply chain. This allows us to track our greenhouse gas emissions both within our offices, as well as on the trips that we create. Our climate action strategy in the lead up to 2030 includes a combination of carbon reductions and carbon offsets, which we will be rolling out over the next year.
Some of the ways that we are currently reducing our emissions include:
- A remote and more global team: only 40% of our team commute into our London office, where we operate a hybrid model of three days per week in person. This drastically minimises emissions created by reducing our overall commute.
- Energy efficient offices: our offices are 100% paper free and use energy-saving measures such as energy-efficient lighting and water-efficient fixtures. We also have 46 well-looked-after plants!
- Staff travel by train: where possible, we encourage and will pay more for staff to travel by train when travelling shorter distances (less than a two hour flight).
- Slow travel: we encourage our staff to travel more slowly, ensuring that long-haul flights are used sparingly. We do this by combining research trips with visits to trade shows and offering up to a month of remote working in the destination afterwards. This not only helps our team travel better but it also reduces our combined emissions.
Building Education and Awareness
Raising awareness of Positive Impact travel and advocating for change requires us to constantly listen to and learn from our partners and continually adapt our approach. We ensure that our team is up to date with their understanding of key issues by providing regular training and education opportunities.
Our Product Managers have all received their official certification in Sustainable Tourism by the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC), an organisation that provides internationally recognised standards of sustainable tourism, and promotes sustainable practices across the world.
It signifies that our Product Managers have undergone rigorous training and evaluation in sustainable tourism practices, ensuring that every aspect of our travel experiences and operations aligns with the highest standards of environmental and social responsibility.
Additionally, we offer a wide range of other training to our staff, including diversity, equity and inclusion training, and child safeguarding training.
Roughly once a year, our staff travel on research trips to the main regions that they cover. During these trips they are encouraged to engage with local communities, take time to reflect on Jacada’s overall Positive Impact strategy, and report back.
Explore the Positive Impact Collection
Look out for the Positive Impact Collection ribbons as you explore the Jacada website. This emblem indicates that a property is a part of the collection. To delve deeper into a property’s initiatives, visit the Positive Impact section on their respective pages, where you can find in-depth information about their actions across the three core pillars of community, climate, and conservation.
If you’d like to know more about how to create a positive impact on your trip, speak to your Travel Designer to see how you might be able to contribute.
