The past weekend saw the World Travel Market gather for the annual WTM Responsible Tourism Awards. Hosted in London this year, the prestigious event took place from 6 to 8 November and saw the leaders in sustainable and responsible tourism unite.
With Grootbos’ dedication to bringing communities and their natural environment together by bringing luxury travel and sustainability together, we are very proud to be amongst those nominated by the WTM.
We recently celebrated World Responsible Tourism Day and are observing 2017 as the UN year of sustainable tourism. With this year’s focus on Responsible Tourism, we are thrilled that Grootbos Private Nature Reserve has been awarded the WTM Responsible Tourism Award in the Best Accommodation category. Winning this award is recognition of our community and sustainability based ethos and we hope that it inspires others as well as spreads the word that luxury travel can be responsible.
The Grootbos team is passionate about sustainability and community upliftment, and this was all formalized with the establishment of the Grootbos Foundation in 2003. The Foundation runs a variety of educational, sports, food security and skills development programmes which reaches over 10,00 members of the surrounding communities every year.
There are also a number of sustainable practices that have been implemented at Grootbos to further improve responsible trade. Some of these projects include the removal of all single use plastic water bottles (a water bottling project has been started on the Reserve). The laundry has also switched to eco-friendly detergents and 26 water meters constantly measures both extraction and usage of water. All of these small changes ensures that Grootbos implements the most efficient management of its water resources.
Once again, we are very proud to have been recognized for this important award. It shows that responsible tourism is important to all and motivates us (and hopefully others) to continue our efforts towards a more sustainable world.
