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travelmatters opened in 1998. Based in what has been dubbed "Nappy Valley" for having the highest percentage of under-fives in the whole of the UK, the agency has always specialized in family holidays. We also put together everything from short breaks to honeymoons and other tailormade itineraries.
The idea of promoting more "ethical " holidays in our Make Travel Matter section, came from Karen's passion of travelling and CONNECTING with a community. The travel experience comes from the involvment of learning from the local community, it is about a holiday with HEART in it, meeting the people, experiencing their culture, respecting their country and land.
Make Travel Matter promotes travel as a privilege. Karen's aim is to encourage people to be more aware of their holiday choices and demonstrate how our behaviour can make such a difference to the countries we holiday in.
Karen
travelmatters was Karen's first baby thirteen years ago. Since then she juggles travel and family life, with the arrivals of Alice, aged 10 and Elsie, aged 7. Her experience is wide and varied including taking people around Europe with Page and Moy, hosting double-decker bus tours with Top Deck travel and running her own tour operating programme in Portugal. She can also be found slipping from English into fluent French, German or Portuguese, often helping in those tricky hotel booking negotiations!
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Catherine
Catherine started working in travel 17 years ago, having found that it was her ideal job. She had spent time backpacking and travelling around the world, so getting the opportunity to explore more of the world and get paid to talk about it, made perfect sense. She is not really a beach person but has sat and watched many a sunrise and sunset on beaches as far as the Maldives to the Brazilian coast. She loves to explore temples, markets, cities and eating most exotic foods. Her destination knowledge is wide and varied from trekking the Inca trail to bagging bananas on a banana farm in Israel. She has huge soft spot for Mickey Mouse.
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Contributors
Veronica Tonge
Veronica Tonge loves the mountains! She is an avid skier having skied in over 50 resorts across Europe, the United States and Canada and has visited at least as many in the summer months for hiking. She enjoys visiting small, authentic mountain villages that have retained a real community and experiencing the many other winter activities besides skiing. As a foodie, and rather partial to the odd schnapps, she relishes the opportunity to try all the local delicacies!
Her professional background is in international website development, project management and marketing with companies in varying areas of tourism including; online consumer travel, business travel and the hotel industry.
The challenge of managing mountain resorts both for the benefit of the locals and the environment has always interested her and led to her obtaining a Masters in Responsible Tourism Management and writing a thesis on skiing and responsible tourism. She has since worked with national tourist boards, written about skiing for the national press and worked with the International Centre for Responsible Tourism.
She is the founder of www.responsibleskiing.com and is dedicated to ensuring that people have a great winter holiday experience – whilst treasuring the mountain environment.
“Responsible Skiing is not about easing your guilt and is not just concerned with CO2 emissions. It’s about engaging with the mountain destination, enjoying a range of winter activities in beautiful surroundings, and having a fun and memorable stay, but not at the cost of the environment or the local population. And we all want that.”
Our Company Values
The director and staff of Travel Matters are committed to work in ways which are responsible and environmentally friendly as possible. In the office the following guidelines are followed.
1. Rubbish:
» Is recycled;
» Other rubbish to be put in general bins;
» Encourage suppliers to not use so much packaging for deliveries.
2. Office Supplies:
» Print and photocopy on both sides of paper;
» Re-use paper only used on one side, e.g. as scrap notepaper, or to print on;
» Using our website as our main source of client information also reduces paper usage dramatically;
» Keeping documents down to the minimum if possible, e.g. if document goes on to a a third page, consider
reducing typeface to keep on 2 pages;
» No printing of documents which can be proofed just as well on screen as on paper;
» Email memos and requests rather than print;
» Recycle ink cartridges.
3. Natural Resources and Energy:
» Turn off lights and use natural light only when possible;
» Turn off heaters when not needed. Keep heat down to a resonable level;
» Turn off computers and printers at night if not needed;
» Don't overfill kettle;
» We cycle, walk or or try to use public transport to work;
» We have switched to using Ecotricity for our energy.
4. Fair Trade:
» Buy fair trade tea, coffee, and sugar.
5. Social and community work:
» We endeavour to let local people know about ethical and fair trade travel - e.g. talks to local primary schools and
telling our clients;
» We encourage clients to support our local fund raising and initiatives. We support various school PTAs and donate
funds to the specific schools;
» Travel Matters offers work experience placements to help young people prepare for adult life - collaborated with
BEST - Business and educationg succeeding together;
» We support wildlife and cultural heritage with links on our website;
» Travel Matters is a supporter of the charity Travel Pledge, a charity enabling clients to give back to local community
projects overseas.