Discover new carbon-neutral tours in destinations across Thailand at WTM 2023

Are you attend­ing World Travel Mar­ket 2023 and look­ing for fun and inspir­ing new car­bon-neut­ral tours for your increas­ingly con­scien­tious and cli­mate-aware customers?

You’re in luck because the Thai Eco­tour­ism and Adven­ture Travel Asso­ci­ation (TEATA) is rolling out 20 new, inspir­ing tours designed to reduce car­bon emis­sions and fully off­set the rest, in loc­al, Thai projects.

TEATA’s par­ti­cip­a­tion at WTM 2023 is sup­por­ted by the European Uni­on (EU)-funded, SWITCH-ASIA Thai Tourlink Pro­ject.

Meet us at the Tour­ism Author­ity of Thai­l­and booth (S10-216, near door 10).

Click here to book a face to face meet­ing with our team at the WTM, Lon­don. (We will also be present dur­ing ITB Ber­lin 2024.)

Or, to organ­ise a meet­ing online, please con­tact switchasia@travelife.info.

Click here for a short over­view of sample tours (PDF).

Here’s a short video about the tours:

The context for Thailand’s new carbon-neutral tours

Trav­el­lers are still look­ing for ways to explore and exper­i­ence, but with a smal­ler car­bon foot­print and few­er impacts on the envir­on­ment. How­ever, identi­fy­ing low-car­bon activ­it­ies can be confusing.

The Thai Eco­tour­ism and Adven­ture Travel Asso­ci­ation (TEATA) will attend WTM 2023 to pro­mote 20 new car­bon-light travel routes around Thailand. 

Developed by TEATA in part­ner­ship with Thai research and car­bon man­age­ment expert organ­isa­tions, these routes weave hands-on loc­al exper­i­ences, eco-explor­a­tion, and loc­al insights across Thailand. 

If your com­pany sends trav­el­lers to Thai­l­and, these routes can help to reduce their emis­sions inside Thai­l­and, without redu­cing the experience! 

The tours are designed to reduce car­bon emis­sions, with the remain­ing emis­sions off­set loc­ally, inside Thai­l­and, through loc­al Thai pro­jects, under the Thai­l­and Green­house Gas Man­age­ment Organ­isa­tion (TGO).

The credibility of Thailand’s new carbon-neutral tours

Since 2020, the Thai Eco­tour­ism and Adven­ture Travel Asso­ci­ation (TEATA) has worked with Thai­l­and Green­house Gas Man­age­ment Organ­isa­tion (TGO), Pro­gram Man­age­ment Unit for Com­pet­it­ive­ness (PMUC), and Thai­l­and Sci­ence Research and Innov­a­tion (TSRI) to design and devel­op fun, inspir­ing new tour­ism routes that reduce car­bon emis­sions and off­set the rest using loc­al Thai off­set­ting schemes. 

This tech­nic­al sup­port has enabled the Thai private sec­tor, includ­ing SMEs and com­munity enter­prises, to devel­op cred­ible car­bon neut­ral routes, and increase access to high value tour­ism mar­kets, through a sci­ence-based approach.

The car­bon foot­print of each route has been cal­cu­lated. The EU SWITCH-ASIA Tourlink pro­ject has brought togeth­er European and Thai car­bon experts to com­pare and align meth­ods for cal­cu­lat­ing the car­bon foot­print of Thai tour­ism itineraries. 

Mutu­al recog­ni­tion of the TGO sys­tem by Car­mac­al adds inter­na­tion­al cred­ib­il­ity to the Thai tools, while enabling car­bon off­sets to dir­ectly sup­port loc­al, Thai projects. 

What do we mean by ‘carbon-neutral’?

Here is a short sum­mary of the scope and respons­ib­il­ity of the Thai Eco­tour­ism and Adven­ture Travel Asso­ci­ation (TEATA)‘s ‘Car­bon Neut­ral’ Routes.

Our pledge

We aim to reduce our car­bon foot­print through energy-effi­cient trans­port, loc­al food sourcing, green accom­mod­a­tion, waste reduc­tion, and sup­port­ing loc­al Thai car­bon off­set projects.

The scope of our claims of carbon neutrality

✓ Begins: When tour­ists arrive at the tour’s des­ig­nated start­ing point.

✓ Ends: At the tour’s des­ig­nated end­ing point.

✓ Includes: The tour­ism ser­vices included in the itinerary.

✓ Excludes: Addi­tion­al, per­son­al choices by tour­ists (option­al tours, souven­irs, etc.)

More inform­a­tion? See TEATA’s Car­bon Foot­print Respons­ib­il­ity State­ment (PDF)

Meet us at WTM 2023

We offer three ways to arrange an indi­vidu­al meeting:

1. Book an on-site meet­ing at WTM, Booth S10-216 (Close to door 10). Click here.
2. Book an online meet­ing (6 – 8 Novem­ber). Click here.
3. Arrange a meet­ing on anoth­er date. Con­tact our team at switchasia@travelife.info 

And / Or

Drop by on Novem­ber 8 from 1100 – 1200 at the Tour­ism Author­ity of Thai­l­and (TAT) WTM 2023 booth (S10-216, near door 10) for an inform­a­tion and net­work­ing event: ‘Intro­du­cing Thailand’s Car­bon Neut­ral Travel Routes New Thai Tours, Craf­ted to Cut your Car­bon Foot­print at Des­tin­a­tion.’ 

Advanced notice of your attend­ance is appre­ci­ated. Con­tact pro­ject man­ager Peter Richards on switchasia@travelife.info (include: “Join Car­bon Neut­ral Event 8 Nov, 11.00 + ‘name of your organ­iz­a­tion’ in the email subject.)

About the Tourlink Project

The EU-Switch ASIA fun­ded Tourlink pro­ject aims to move Thai tour­ism towards sus­tain­ab­il­ity, through a busi­ness led, sup­ply chain approach. Thai tour oper­at­ors and sup­pli­ers will be sup­por­ted to achieve a pros­per­ous COVID-19 recov­ery, by meet­ing European demand for sus­tain­able Thai tourism. 

Since 2020, the Tourlink team has been work­ing along­side Thai tour­ism asso­ci­ations, tour oper­at­ors and sup­pli­ers to agree on com­mon, min­im­um codes of best prac­tice. Based on this work, the pro­ject aims to work with part­ners in Thai­l­and and Europe, and the Tour­ism Author­ity of Thai­l­and (TAT), to strengthen and pro­mote Thai­l­and as a lead­ing sus­tain­able tour­ism destination.

So far, the SWITCH-ASIA Tourlink pro­ject has raised the capa­city of more than 500 Thai tour­ism busi­nesses to offer more sus­tain­able products and ser­vices, includ­ing Thai tour oper­at­ors, hotels, land trans­port, mar­ine and com­munity excur­sion sup­pli­ers, and tour guides. This has been done through devel­op­ing tailored tools and resources in Thai and Eng­lish lan­guages, aware­ness rais­ing, train­ing, coach­ing, and mar­ket recog­ni­tion through cer­ti­fic­a­tion. Through Tourlink part­ners, tools and les­sons learned have been fur­ther dis­sem­in­ated to sev­er­al thou­sand busi­nesses and oth­er tour­ism stake­hold­ers inside Thai­l­and and regionally. 

The pro­ject is led by the European Centre for Eco and Agro Tour­ism (ECEAT), which man­ages Trav­elife for tour oper­at­ors and travel agents, along with Thai part­ner organ­isa­tions includ­ing Des­ig­nated Areas for Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Admin­is­tra­tion (Pub­lic Organ­iz­a­tion) (DASTA), Pacific Asia Travel Asso­ci­ation (PATA), Thai Eco­tour­ism and Adven­ture Travel Asso­ci­ation (TEATA), and Thai­l­and Hotel Asso­ci­ation (THA). Pro­ject part­ners have agreed to work as a team to raise sus­tain­ab­il­ity stand­ards and per­form­ance with­in Thai tour­ism sup­ply chains.

Since the begin­ning of the pro­ject in May 2020, addi­tion­al Thai gov­ern­ment agen­cies and private tour­ism organ­isa­tions have partnered with Tourlink, provid­ing research and train­ing expert­ise. These include Thai­l­and Green­house Gas Man­age­ment Organ­iz­a­tion (TGO), the Depart­ment of Envir­on­ment­al Qual­ity Pro­mo­tion (DEQP), Green­leaf Found­a­tion, the Asso­ci­ation of Thai Travel Agents (ATTA), Thai­l­and Com­munity Based Tour­ism Insti­tute (CBT‑I), Thai­l­and Respons­ible Tour­ism Asso­ci­ation, and Fair Tour­ism, a Dutch NGO work­ing on com­munity tour­ism and human rights.