Season 4, Episode 124 : Shannon Guihan

Will Richardson 00:02
Shannon, welcome to the Green Element Podcast. Thank you so much. Now you are from the Travel Cooperation and Trade Rights. I've just had that wrong, haven't I?

Shannon Guihan 00:12
Nailed it! The Travel Corporation and the Treadright Foundation. That's right, that'll do.

Will Richardson 00:17
Brilliant. Brilliant. Have you written it down? What is it that you guys do?

Shannon Guihan 00:23
Well, we travel. We are a family of brands and, and we are 40 travel brands. So we represent luxury hotels through Red Carnation hotels, luxury river cruises through river, through Uniworld. And in addition to guided touring brands, including Trafalgar, Insight Vacations, Luxury Gold, Contiki, and many more.

Will Richardson 00:50
So, we've probably all heard as listeners, some of those brands that you've just spoken about, because they're international, aren't they? By the sounds of it?

Shannon Guihan 01:00
Absolutely. Yeah, we we consider source markets, the United States, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand and beyond, so.

Will Richardson 01:09
Brilliant, what would you say your purpose was as an organisation?

Shannon Guihan 01:13
To make travel matter.

Will Richardson 01:17
Could you enlarge upon that brilliant purpose? You can't fault it?

Shannon Guihan 01:24
That's good! Never get to use that as my only answer. And absolutely, our purpose is to deliver amazing travel experiences across multiple demographics. And we operate in 80 plus countries in the world. More I'm sure I've gotten that wrong. And an underlying critical element of our purpose is to integrate sustainability into everything that we do at the organisation, the way in which we operate the way in which we travel and the way in which we talk to our valued guests.

Will Richardson 02:07
And when engaging your guests on sustainability, how do you go about that engagement of them? Through what kind of means or I mean, how do you engage your guests?

Shannon Guihan 02:24
Sure, I mean, that's a process that's forever evolving. And I mean, look, at the end of the day, we offer holidays. So one must keep that in mind. This is a discretionary spend. It's something that people do to get away, if you will. But we encourage our guests not to leave their sensibilities from a responsibility perspective at home, which often, unfortunately, is the case in travel. So you know, we have some heavy topics to talk about with our guests, at times, single use plastics, climate change, our reliance on you know, an overwhelming number of convenience items that will never be used again. And so what we do is we engage with what we call our treadright ambassadors. So of course, there's the Travel Corporation, our 40 brands, and then we have a not for profit called the TreadRight Foundation. I oversee the foundation and the group's direction on sustainability. At the TreadRight Foundation, we have three ambassadors, we have Celine Cousteau, she's a filmmaker, that many audience, audiences recognise her name, I'm sure. National Geographic photographer, Amy fatale, out of the US, and an indigenous activist out of Canada called Serene Fox. And they tell our stories through social media through what I hope are beautiful videos. And we try to take heavy topics and bring them into I guess, later delivery modes through video.

Will Richardson 03:59
And how engaged Do you think your clients are with what you're doing? Has that changed over the years?

Shannon Guihan 04:08
I think so, I think that they have come to buy they I think that travelling travellers have come to expect that whatever companies that they are purchasing from, be it a product or service, have a sustainability credentials that are legitimate and robust to stand on. And quite frankly, that serves me because it's a really difficult question to answer will travellers go with you because you're more sustainable. You know, we have a lot of stats that that state that they will based on their intention. We don't see a lot of stats that say that they actually do when it comes to putting their credit card down.

Will Richardson 04:49
It'll be interesting to see if that does change, post COVID and post what's going on at the moment.

Shannon Guihan 04:55
I'm hopeful but I don't want our business or our industry to rely on it. I think that we need to, as an industry track towards sustainability as a matter of resiliency. Not as a USP any longer.

Will Richardson 05:12
Yeah, that makes sense, I think. Because, I can only speak from the UK point of view, because we're not really travelling at all. But we have seen a massive shift in the rhetoric around sustainability in the UK, with any organisation looking at expecting to become more sustainable, and actually putting it above any other business decisions that have been made during difficult times as well. It's been difficult for a lot of organisations around the world and now putting sustainability at the top of the decision.

Shannon Guihan 05:56
Yeah, I mean, we're seeing that in Canada as well, though, you know, I think that people think Canada's green credentials are better than they are simply because we have so much natural space. I would argue that the travel Corporation 100% are sort of track to recovery is tracking alongside our efforts at sustainability, I would put them of equal importance, one having to make room for the other based on sort of commercial realities at any given moment. But we do see sustainability again, it's critical to, it's what we need to present prevent another travel cessation that many organisations wouldn't wouldn't. If this happens again.

Will Richardson 06:42
Have you carbon footprinted of your organisation? And would you say it's been a benefit?

Shannon Guihan 06:47
It's been a task, and it's been a benefit. And it's, it's, again, another I mean, they don't throw the word critical around lightly, but it is. So absolutely, we have just recently completed the carbon footprint of our organisation based on 2019 data, of course, because 2020 who wants to report on it. And it was our sort of, of course, last biggest and best year, and we have entered into an agreement with South Pole Carbon offset, or to start building a portfolio of offsets for our business. And by our business, of course, I mean, our owned assets, hotel properties, cruises, all of our offices, depos worldwide, we're taking a slightly different approach to our services, because we have to. And we built a custom tool to allow us to calculate the carbon footprint per guest, per day, per brand. In fact, we're also able to drill down to per region just based on carbon factors, varying amongst regions. And that exercise was completed in the middle of COVID. In fact, we just ran the numbers several weeks ago. Now we are looking at how and when amongst our brands to roll out offsets to ensure every experience is carbon neutral. Though, of course, offsets are an interim solution, are they?

Will Richardson 08:20
Yeah. And so are you looking at the reductions and what you can reduce within those organisations?

Shannon Guihan 08:25
Absolutely. On our call it HQ side of things. reductions are primary. So we've nearly exhausted our solar capabilities at all of our offices, Red Carnation Hotels will be run on 50% or 100%, sorry, renewables by the close of 2021. That includes all of our London properties. So renewables are critical, reducing and drawing down is critical, was difficult in travel and tourism is doing that on your supply chain, because of course, the travel experience requires a number of disparate suppliers, of which we have very little influence over and so that's where offsets are really important in this business.

Will Richardson 09:08
Yeah, I think I'm probably going to steer away from offsets because of the nature of what they are and what we feel about them as an organisation personally, if that's okay. I wonder when it comes to reducing your environmental impact and the carbon footprint of your business, what would you say your biggest single challenge has been or frustration?

Shannon Guihan 09:38
I mean, I think I've just named it the fact that what we own in terms of assets and what we can make change in it's not a difficult proposition at the travel Corporation. You know, integrating renewables and into our offices was mandated several years back and it's just been rolling through as in where we can, reducing our impact that we can control, there's that there's no question draw down first, but the supply chain, it's a real challenge. And I mean, let's face it, we're based on carbon. Sorry, we're based on jet fuel. And, and that's a real challenge, because you look at it. It's a it's a conundrum. And, and we need, we need some, we need to actually make good on the word collaboration and travel and tourism, and we need to help scale carbon capture. I mean, there's there's I don't have the answers with respect to technology, unfortunately. And that's no challenge.

Will Richardson 10:45
No, it is. It is. And I can yeah, but I think it's not only just having these conversations, I think it's recognising what good travel has, as well, in the world, I think that it's very quick to say that travel, if no one travels, we would sure as hell suddenly become quite ignorant of each other around the world. And I think things would become quite, I would say backward, in the way that we think about each other's cultures. And travel has a massive, massive part of peace.

Shannon Guihan 11:27
It does. But moreover, we also have been incredibly successful in the past 15-20 years, and we've created a whole system of countries destinations that are reliant on us as being mobile and visiting and supporting locally owned co ops and restaurants. And it's a whole, it's a massive industry and COVID only highlighted that. So you know, rapid travel shutdown impacts everything from animal welfare, to wildlife conservation to small businesses globally. You know, most of these businesses don't run on massive war chests, their seasonal businesses, often and their mom and pops. So yeah, the economic implications are also devastating to small communities.

Will Richardson 12:21
Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely not. But then travelled done correctly is a good thing for that reason alone, really.

Shannon Guihan 12:31
It's a great thing.

Will Richardson 12:33
And so, I mean, coming through COVID, what, how do you see, you know, what would be a good future for you, within the travel industry, or at your organisation?

Shannon Guihan 12:52
A good thing for us, I mean, we have just launched our new five year sustainability strategy with smart goals that we are very, very, very active at implementing, you know, we've seen success at integrating sustainability because we focused on a business function perspective, our sustainability efforts are proving successful, because they're very, very reliant on our product and operations teams. And in our business, if you tell an operations team, exactly what needs doing, rest assured it's gonna get done, they're just a different breed there, they get it done. Where I see value or opportunity is you know, we we still operate in silos with respect to sustainability at the destination and travel, trade distribution network side of things. So that traditional model is maintained, where destinations try to sell their destination to you, you come in destination still often measure success based on on arrival figures, rather than perhaps yields on a per arrival basis. You know, so the measures of success at the destination level and the way that intersects with the industry needs a serious, serious look at to integrate sustainability into that. Because really, what we have is several players focusing on sustainability in travel and tourism, some destinations that are focused on it, but not enough of us. And that's really where the opportunity is to see this. I don't want to have to talk about the business case anymore. I just want to get going. Let's just get it done.

Will Richardson 14:42
Yeah, that makes sense. That makes complete sense. Do you see there's a I'm looking at geographically or places, do you find that there's different cultures with regards to sustainability? Considering you've got such a wide kind of footprints as it were, and understanding of different geographical areas?

Shannon Guihan 15:09
I mean, absolutely, the conversation is prioritised in differently in a lot of different countries and regions. And it's it's tricky, you know, because I'm from a place where the fisheries failed us, our natural resources failed us through terrible management, basically. And we all, you know, when I was coming up, the jobs were in tourism, my first job at 16 was a CK guide. And that's never looked back, you know, and, and, and tourism has always been seen as a soft industry, job creator, let's get into it. And we've been successful, and we've met those challenges those needs. But not every destination has understood that, you know, there's there also needs to be I guess, a check some checks and balances in place to ensure that, you know, happy community is that is a great place to visit, right. And not everybody understands that if from a destination perspective, and I think that a happy community recognises sustainability. And some destinations just have other problems, basically, and they don't understand that tie, or they haven't yet, prioritise that tie between sustainability and diversity and inclusion, representation, food production, and all of that whole system that that that we might see. It's still two disparate travel, and tourism happens over here in this department. Everything else is totally separate. And that's a real shame to me.

Will Richardson 16:48
And when you when you look at destinations, and when you are designing things, it D is that the sort of things you take into consideration, or, you know, is sustainability a part of the model, you know, decision making process?

Shannon Guihan 17:08
as to where we decide to go?

Will Richardson 17:11
Yeah, yeah.

Shannon Guihan 17:13
I wouldn't say, you know, for better or worse, I would say that still a very consumer demand driven proposition, I would say that at our brands, the way in which we develop an experience absolutely integrates questions of sustainability. And, and that is directly driven by our goals. So our brands are, are now tracked against how much local and organic food that they're implementing into itineraries. And that's a KPI for them, are are now tracked against how many developing destinations in an effort to sort of spread beyond the traditional tourism hub and spoke model. And that's a way to address over tourism. And in addition to the fact that we've created a new programme make travel matter experiences that allows us to assess the travel experience against the way in which it advances the UN SDGs. And every brand is obliged to integrate one make travel matter experience on 50% of itineraries by 2025. So now you have product development teams who are fluent in the United Nations sustainable development goals, and are identifying experiences based on that.

Will Richardson 18:34
And with regards to the Sustainable Development Goals, um, have you brought many organisations are bringing the SDGs into their kind of, you know, decision making process? And is that something that you, you guys have done?

Shannon Guihan 18:53
Yeah, we have done. So, in the early days of developing our new strategy, we did a materiality assessment to identify what issues impact us as a business, what issues impact destinations, and we add an additional layer to then state will what issues are a priority to prioritise by the SDGs? And what tactics do they have they identified to help then affect change against these issues. So are the SDGs are entwined quite heavily in our new strategy.

Will Richardson 19:31
One thing that you want our listeners to take away from this conversation, what would that be, please?

Shannon Guihan 19:40
Absolutely. Research who you're travelling with. It's 2020. And I maintain that if you know the brands that you are vacationing with, are not already doing it for you. Then you're vacationing with the wrong brands. There's so much that hotels can do and are not doing. And so they need to tell you. And so I think that there's no more power than that. That's within your wallet. And I urge travellers and consumers to encourage the rest of us with their wallets.

Will Richardson 20:20
Brilliant, brilliant. Thank you so much for that. And how do we learn more about you and more about your organisation, please?

Shannon Guihan 20:28
you can visit ttc.com and take a look at our 40 brands. You can also take a look at various experiences and itineraries directly through ttc.com. And then you can go right over to the TreadRight Foundation website and that identifies are more than 50 plus community projects globally. Our position on animal welfare you know, our make travel matter checklists, things that you can do before you even book your your your next holiday to understand how you can weave responsibility in.

Will Richardson 21:09
Brilliant. It's been an absolute pleasure having you on Thank you so much, Alan.

Shannon Guihan 21:12
Thank you