Responsible Tourism

Iris Holidays & Travel Planners was started with a genuine desire to create environmentally friendly holiday packages which will showcase the culture and heritage of Kerala and other parts of South India to travellers from all over the world.We support  charities in Kerala and offer volunteering vacation packages in Kerala. We have defined paperless processes and always review the materials used and available technologies (e.g. recyclable vs. recycled) with our suppliers whenever we produce printed materials.

Our Responsible Tourism Policy helps us ensure that we operate in accordance with these principles. It also demonstrates to our tourism industry partners our commitment to social, economic, and environmental best practices. As we believe this approach to be the only sustainable way to deliver high quality customised and tailor-made holiday experiences, we monitor, evaluate, and report our social, economic, and environmental impact annually.

We will design and operate our holidays in a way that gives the highest degree of long-term economic benefit to the host communities, whilst also maintaining and/or improving the environment.

• We strive to use local suppliers wherever possible.
• We strive to develop long-term relationships with our partners overseas so that the economic benefit is ongoing.
• We strive to work with our overseas partners to increase the skill sets of our local staff.
• We strive to ensure that our type and scale of tourism is appropriate to local conditions and does not overload local infrastructure.
• We will take into consideration economic, environmental and cultural issues when looking at new destinations.
• We strive to minimise water and atmospheric pollution from any specific tourism development we use.
• We strive to achieve zero litter policies everywhere.
• We will treat our employees fairly in all aspects.
• We strive to work closely with all relevant local bodies and authorities to help preserve or improve the environment and deliver a long-term benefit for the host community.
• Where possible we will encourage local involvement and provide financial support for economic, social or environmental projects that will benefit the local communities.

We will attempt to operate our holidays in a way that encourages positive cultural exchanges.

• We will encourage our clients, through our literature, staff and leaders, to act in a socially responsible way.
• We will attempt to impart an insight and understanding of the host culture and community to our clients so that they can gain more from visiting them.
• We will encourage and train our local partners and staff to gain an insight into the culture and way of life of our clients.
  
  

We will attempt to integrate the ethos of responsible tourism throughout our organisation.

• We will run our head office in a responsible manner by using fair-trade products,pay for experience policy, monitoring, and where possible reducing, our energy usage, as well as recycling.
• We will provide regular and ongoing training in the principles and practices of responsible tourism, both to our office staff and those employed directly or indirectly around the world.

If you have any questions/comments about our responsible tourism policy, you should contact us at info@irisholidays.com