atr safari

Company name : ATR Safari
Location : USA, UK, RSA
Business sector : Travel agency
Certification : Carbon Neutral +


ATR Safari is the ‘world’s leading tailor-made safari company’.

Founded in 1999, this specialist travel agency earned its reputation by building innovative and authentic safaris through Africa and has since expanded to offer similarly exciting trips to other continents.

The company had been very much aware of the considerable carbon footprints created by their trips and had been intending to do something about it for many years.

They knew that time had truly arrived when customers started to proactively ask whether they could offset their trips.

The fact that the company has always been so focused on conservation means that the customer base is both conscious of and keen to take action on carbon.

In fact they had started to expect it.

Certification process

As a travel agent, ATR has two very distinct components to its carbon footprint, indirect (relating to the company infrastructure) and direct (relating to the travel product itself). The way in which these two areas are handled defines the level of carbon certification.


Carbon neutral

In order for the company to achieve carbon neutral status, it was necessary to offset the indirect footprint, which includes the carbon emissions created by all of the support structures, offices, staff, travel and associated extras.

Travel is a low-margin high-value sector, so this indirect footprint tends to be very small compared with the footprint of the travel products that the company sells. When we ran the calculations it turned out to represent less than 2% of the total turnover.

The modest cost of offsetting this indirect footprint by purchasing carbon credits still felt considerable, given the severe impact of the pandemic on the sector at the time, but the ATR management were confident it would deliver suitably positive outcomes and decided to go ahead.

This enabled the company to achieve Carbon Neutral certification.

Carbon Free

Going Carbon Free is a much more onerous task, which involves additionally taking responsibility for the direct footprint, the actual trips themselves, representing the remaining 98% of emissions.

In this travel agent scenario, offsetting the actual travel emissions is most commonly achieved by adding carbon surcharges to trip invoices.

This can be done in a number of different ways and there was some considerable discussion as to whether the surcharges should be visible or invisible, compulsory or voluntary, opt-in or opt-out.

For scale, these offsets typically represent about 0.3-0.8% of the invoice value.

The first decision was easy, the surcharges would be visible. The company reported that a high proportion of their guests already expected that appropriate action would be taken to offset their trips. The market was ready.

The second decision was that the surcharges should be optional. The concern was that a small proportion of guests may be so annoyed at being obliged to pay a surcharge that they would choose to book with another company.

The third decision was that the surcharges should be opt-out. That is to say, they would be included on all invoices in such a way that a customer would actively have to ask for them to be removed if they didn’t want to pay. Although this does carry a slight risk of upsetting a reluctant customer, it was felt that it would be the only effective route to achieving high take-up rates.

The surcharge items were careful worded to make it clear that the company was not being in any way sanctimonious our insistent that the customers must pay, whilst the opt-out route was made easy and painless.

In order to achieve Carbon Free certification through this route, it was necessary for the greater than 80% of the customers to choose to pay the surcharges. The company was left to monitor that process over the first year, with the understanding that for every period that the threshold were exceeded, we would grant the prestigious Carbon Free status.

If the threshold were not met, then the company has the option to buy sufficient carbon offsets to make it up to 80%, to improve internal systems to drive further uptake or to simply run with the existing Carbon Neutral status.

It is important to understand that there are no additional costs to the company associated with offering these carbon surcharges and achieving Carbon Free status (other than a small administration fee, as we help you establish the processes). In fact there is even a small retail margin associated with purchasing the carbon credits from us.

Feedback

“Although ATR is very definitely a travel company, having worked in safari for many years, most of us think of ourselves primarily as advocates of conservation.

”To our shame, we let the nagging doubts about the impact of travel on climate linger for years without ever seriously addressing the issue. In safari we seem to lurch from one global or continental crisis to the next, without ever having the respite to take on such projects.

”It therefore came as some surprise to us that it was another crisis, the Covid pandemic, that provided us with both the time and motivation to light a fire under this issue.

”For complete transparency, we would like to highlight the fact that squestr was born out of ATR. Although a completely separate company, with different ownership and staff, there is a common bond that explains why ATR was a natural early partner.

”The advantages of decades of experience gained from the world of safari has been fundamental to the ability of squestr to establish and manage tree-planting operations in Africa.

”Given this connection, it might seem a little disingenuous for me to sing their praises, but let me say this.

“The mission that squestr is undertaking is a hugely positive one and we strongly recommend that other companies get on board. For the staff at ATR, Joe is the first of our next generation to enter this arena and we are proud that he has chosen such a highly commendable path.

”We urge others to take the plunge and help Joe plant millions of trees across tropical Africa. It’s a real feel-good story.”

Tony Fishlock
Founder and Director, ATR Safari Limited