Staff Writer
The TUI Care Foundation and enpact have recently become winners of two Gold and one Silver Award at the WTM Responsible Tourism Awards. The awards recognise their work around the world for programmes that supported sustainable tourism businesses during the pandemic in Africa and Latin America. Championing achievements in responsible tourism, the TUI Care Foundation also received a Silver Award at WTM London, in the category of ‘Sustaining Employees and Communities through the Pandemic’ and won an Energy Globe Award for its TUI Junior Academy in Curaçao, to recognise its work training teachers and young people about environmental issues, recycling and sustainability.
To empower small, sustainable tourism businesses making a positive impact in emerging and developing countries around the world, the TUI Care Foundation and enpact began supporting 565 innovative entrepreneurial teams in the tourism sector with mentoring and financial assistance in December 2020. The COVID-19 Relief Programme for Tourism and Tourism Recovery Programme helped with crisis management strategies, protecting jobs and building sustainable local economic development.
The programmes have now been presented a Gold Award by WTM Africa, in the category ‘Destinations Building Back Better Post-Covid’. In WTM Africa’s Virtual Volunteering category, which recognises the innovative use of virtual mentoring as a way to engage with people and contribute to tourism destinations, the two programmes received an additional Silver Award. They were also awarded Gold by WTM Latin America in the category ‘Growing the Local Economic Benefit’, for their work supporting local communities in Mexico.
Dr. Harold Goodwin, Chair of the judging panel for the WTM Responsible Tourism Awards said: “Each year we recognise businesses which have taken responsibility for enhancing tourism’s positive impacts or reducing the negative ones. The TUI Care Foundation’s work to support SMME’s during the pandemic was an excellent example of what big players like TUI can do to support and develop the work of the small local enterprises which employ so many and provide so much of the character of the destination.”
The TUI Care Foundation has also recently won three other global awards for its work: A Silver Award for the Global Corona Relief Fund in the category of ‘Sustaining Employees and Communities through the Pandemic’ at WTM London. The award recognised the TUI Care Foundation’s Corona relief activities in tourism destinations, which included the distribution of emergency packages to vulnerable families, providing childcare facilities, home-schooling initiatives, community health-care and financial relief for enterprises with tourism-related social impact missions.
In addition, the Barcelona Sustainable Tourism Awards (BST) presented by the consortium Turisme de Barcelona, recognised the TUI Care Foundation’s best sustainable practices.
And finally, the TUI Junior Academy in Curaçao received a National Energy Globe Award, for its work training teachers and young people about environmental issues, recycling and sustainability. The TUI Junior Academy offered an interactive curriculum and implemented a recycling system in local schools on Curacao together with the local organisation Greenkidz. The Energy Globe Award recognises and promotes innovative solutions for shared prosperity and safeguarding the environment.
