HATTA Joins Travelife Scheme

The Hellenic Association of Travel and Tourist Agencies (HATTA) announced yesterday, 16 January, that it was joining the new EU project “Corporate Social Responsibility Training and Certification in the Travel Sector” (CSR Tour) under the Leonardo da Vinci 2012 program.

This follows HATTA’s participation in the EOS CODE (European Code of Practice on Environment Oriented Sustainability).

The CSR Tour project facilitates the introduction of the tested and proven corporate social responsibility (CSR) training and management system “Travelife” among members of Polish, Latvian, Greek and Croatian travel associations.

The Travelife methodology for CSR in tourism provides travel companies with a range of practical learning, assessment and implementation tools that enable staff to implement CSR in their companies.

The main goal of the project is to ensure the environmental, social and economic sustainability of the European tourism industry.

For this reason, the “CSR Tour” project will be implemented in cooperation with travel agencies and tourism vocational education and training schools.

“The adoption of the Travelife methodology for CSR in Greek travel agencies will give them a competitive advantage in the new era of tourism, in which sustainability and corporate social responsibility are essential,” HATTA said in an announcement.

The CSR Tour project will launch 1 November 2012 and run for two years.

Partners of the project
1. Exporting partners – developers of the Travelife CSR training and award system:
ECEAT (European Centre for Eco and Agro Tourism) – The Netherlands
ABTA (Association of British Travel Agencies) – United Kingdom
2. Importing partners – national travel associations (the target group) aiming to support their members in CSR:
UHPA (Association of Croatian Agencies) – Croatia
HATTA (Hellenic Association of Travel & Tourist Agencies) – Greece
LC (Latvijas lauku turisma asociacija “Lauku celotajs”) – Latvia
PIT ( Polska Izba Turystyki) – Poland.

It is noted that the Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises (SETE) recently signed a cooperation agreement with Travelife and the European Centre for Ecological and Agricultural Tourism (ECEAT) to support the sustainability of Greek tourism.