Inntravel
Based in York, Inntravel has been a member of Green Traveller since 2009.
A word from Inntravel:
Slow Holidays and 'Sustainable Tourism'
Sustainable tourism has never been a bandwagon for us – it’s ‘in our genes’ and has been at the heart of our business since we began selling holidays over 35 years ago. It’s therefore no surprise that we take our social, environmental and cultural responsibilities very seriously.
We call these Slow Holidays because we don’t believe precious time away should be spent rushing from place to place. Instead, we seek out the lesser-taken path, allowing you to enjoy a truly individual experience at your own pace. Whether you choose to walk, ski, cycle, or take an inspiring journey by train, boat or car, our carefully crafted holidays ease you into the rhythm and patterns of everyday life as you journey through wonderful landscapes, uncover hidden corners and share chance encounters with local people. Relish delicious regional cuisine and relax in authentic hotels of great character. Savour the moments and enjoy life from the Slow Lane – with Inntravel.
Many of our holidays take place in remote, rural areas where depopulation is a threat to the local economy. By holidaying in these regions, our customers help to bring employment and regeneration to these areas. Many of the walking and cycling routes also help to keep open traditional drovers’ roads and other ancient paths. In addition, we provide a wealth of information on the history and gastronomy of our chosen regions – this helps to promote, and thereby help maintain, local cultures and traditions. We carefully consider the impact and the benefits of each potential new holiday at the planning stage, to ensure that it complements our existing programme and our commitment to sustainable tourism.
Here's a video that gives you a flavour of Inntravel's holidays:
Individual and independent
The hotels and taxi companies we use are, almost without exception, local and family-run businesses. An increasing number of our hoteliers feature local produce on their menus, something that we support and promote. Many also have an environmental policy, relating for example to laundry, energy conservation, resource use, etc, and we encourage this as much as possible. The fact that our holidays are for individuals rather than groups also allows us to work in very quiet villages with small hotels and guesthouses offering as few as two or three rooms.
Providing choice and flexibility
An increasing number of our customers are choosing to travel on holiday by rail, taking the Eurostar from St Pancras, and we offer a ‘by rail’ price option wherever our destinations can be reached comfortably in a day from the UK. We provide a summary of these holidays – plus a selection of those which are more commonly reached by air but which also have strong environmental credentials – on the sustainable tourism section of our website, www.inntravel.co.uk
Leading by example
Our offices, sympathetically converted from a disused farm building, are well insulated and use energy-efficient lighting. We closely monitor heating and electricity usage, as well as other resource-use such as paper, and we also look at how many of our staff car-share – as our office is not served by public transport, we encourage this wherever possible; currently around a third of our staff share transport on a regular basis. We use paper from sustainably managed forests for all our printing, and the envelopes in which we mail our brochures are made from sustainably sourced fully recyclable paper and cardboard. We recycle as much waste as possible, including paper, cardboard packaging, plastic bottles, batteries and tin cans. We also send all used printer cartridges to a charity that refills them. We offset all our business air-travel emissions with a financial contribution to Climate Care, and also encourage our staff to offset their own personal air travel.