Our sustainability strategy, which covers economic, environmental and social issues, is integral to the way we do business at Thomas Cook Group. We focus on the responsible management of those issues over which we have most influence and about which our stakeholders are most concerned:
Customers
We aim to be number one for customer delivery: building trust, encouraging loyalty and protecting the health and safety of everyone who travels with us.
Employees
We aim to recruit and retain people who are proud to work for the company and deliver the best possible service. We provide a safe working environment, competitive reward packages and supportive training and development programmes.
Environment
As a priority among our environmental impacts, we aim to reduce our contribution to climate change, improving our data reporting systems and complying with all applicable climate legislation.
Home communities
We aim to play an active part in the communities in which most of our people live and work. We contribute financially, as well as with in-kind donations and our time, thus enhancing Thomas Cook Group’s reputation.
Destination communities
We support the communities in which our customers holiday, with the aim of making our products more sustainable. Alongside our use of the Travelife system, we take action on specific issues including the sexual exploitation of children and animal welfare.
Brand
Through all our sustainability activity, we aim to protect the Thomas Cook Group brands, enhance our reputation and work in ways that support our values.
The prioritisation of these six issues forms the basis of our action plans for the coming year, the targets we have set ourselves and the content of this report.
Stakeholder dialogue
Our stakeholders help us to determine which sustainability issues are key to our business. Although we have not yet established a formal materiality process, we engage with a range of stakeholders and aim to be responsive to their concerns. This dialogue takes many forms, including:
- Internal meetings and committees
- Discussions with investors, including the socially responsible investment (SRI) community
- Dialogue with external organisations, such as The Travel Foundation, Forum for the Future and Futouris. Following dialogue with the Born Free Foundation, we have developed an animal welfare policy
- Customer and employee surveys
- Submission of data on our sustainability impacts to organisations including the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). The request for data from CDP raised awareness within Thomas Cook Group of the need to measure our carbon footprint
- Engagement with local communities, both at home and in holiday destinations
- Liaison with trade associations and suppliers
- Consultation on national and international policy developments
Risk management
All companies within Thomas Cook Group have a common process for ensuring risks are identified, assessed and reviewed regularly. These include social and environmental risks. Each business segment has a Risk Management Committee, chaired by the segment’s Chief Financial Officer, which meets at least quarterly. These committees assess financial impacts and establish mitigation strategies for the risks they identify and monitor the effectiveness of those strategies once implemented. Any significant issues are escalated to the Group Risk Management Committee.
The Group Risk Management Committee is responsible for:
- supervising a thorough and regular evaluation of the nature and extent of the risks to which the company is exposed
- reviewing the corporate risk profile and recommending risk management strategies
- supervising and assessing the overall effectiveness of the risk management process.
Each of our six priority areas listed above has risks attached to it. For example:
- The risks of a fall in customer demand for traditional package tours and competition from internet distributors and low-cost airlines clearly threatens our future profitability.
- Loss of, or difficulty in replacing, employees, especially senior talent, may lead to inability to drive strategic initiatives, as well as discontinuity in management and leadership.
- Due to our impact on the environment, we face risks both from climate change, which could threaten some of our holiday destinations, and the legislation that is being introduced to combat climate change, as this will likely incur significant costs for the Thomas Cook Group.
- The risks associated with a poor reputation as a result of reduced involvement in home communities include difficulty attracting new recruits and poor staff retention.
- In relation to destination communities, there are risks from unsustainable practices threatening the future of the destinations and customers choosing not to holiday with us because they do not like the unsustainable practices they see.
- A major health and safety incident or activities inconsistent with our brand values could have a significant impact on our reputation as a trusted brand, leading to a reduction in bookings.
Policies and procedures
We have also developed an overarching Group Sustainability Policy as well as a number of Group policies on individual sustainability and corporate responsibility issues. These include our:
We are in the early stages of establishing Group-wide systems for monitoring and managing our sustainability performance. We have excellence/best practice in many areas across our business segments, but our priorities going forward include developing a Group-wide approach, coherent reporting and consistent sustainability standards across all our businesses.