{"id":9603,"date":"2016-03-16T19:23:14","date_gmt":"2016-03-16T18:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/travindy.com\/?p=9603"},"modified":"2016-03-16T19:47:51","modified_gmt":"2016-03-16T18:47:51","slug":"interviews-tourism-social-entrepreneurs-6-greenloons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/travindy.com\/news\/2016\/03\/interviews-tourism-social-entrepreneurs-6-greenloons\/","title":{"rendered":"Interviews with tourism social entrepreneurs #6: Greenloons"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Interviews<\/p>\n

This is the sixth\u00a0in our new series of interviews with social entrepreneurs working in tourism. Irene Lane runs\u00a0Greenloons<\/a>, which directly connects travelers with eco-certified guiding companies and sustainable tourism accommodation owners that have been independently verified as focusing on the triple bottom line of economic viability, social empowerment, and environmental responsibility.<\/em><\/p>\n

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<\/div><\/h5>\n
TRAVINDY: <\/strong>What are the challenges your company is trying to address?<\/h5>\n

GREENLOONS<\/a>:<\/strong> Greenloons\u2019 mission is two-fold; we aim to bridge the communication gap about responsible travel by, first, engaging travelers\u2019 altruistic notions of the social, environmental and economic power of an authentic travel experience and, second, engaging tourism business owners about the criteria, challenges, critical success factors, and bottom line economics of responsible travel. Hence, one platform for both audiences to directly interact with each other.<\/p>\n

Specifically for travelers, we feature \u2018what\u2019s going well with responsible travel\u2019 or \u2018what questions to ask\u2019 and inspire travelers to consider taking eco-certified vacations.<\/p>\n

Additionally, we educate business owners to consider implementing \u201cgreen” into their operations by providing them with a proprietary ROI (return on investment) tool that calculates the operational,\u00a0community, employee and customer impact of \u201cgreen” investments.<\/p>\n

We want decisions about\u00a0responsible travel to be based on data, not just marketing trends.<\/p>\n

TRAVINDY:\u00a0<\/strong>What is the impact you are trying to achieve?<\/h5>\n

\"InterviewsGREENLOONS<\/a>:\u00a0<\/strong>Greenloons is trying to raise the level of discourse of what it means to\u00a0\u201ctravel\u00a0responsibly\u201d or\u00a0\u201crun a responsible company\u201d. \u00a0Too often, the focus has been about the\u00a0environmental components of responsible travel, while sometimes de-emphasizing the social and economic components of\u00a0\u201cgoing green”.<\/p>\n

Also, travelers and tourism business owners alike routinely don\u2019t understand what\u00a0\u201cresponsible travel\u201d means. \u00a0We want them to be able to answer the questions\u00a0\u201cwhat vetted and transparent methods are there for travelers to choose responsible travel?\u201d and \u00a0\u201cwhat is the actual economic value for a tourism business that wants to ‘go green’?\u201d<\/p>\n

TRAVINDY:\u00a0<\/strong>What’s special about your approach to meeting these challenges?<\/h5>\n

\"ScreenGREENLOONS<\/a>:<\/strong> We developed a\u00a0proprietary financial model\u00a0that\u00a0combines operational, employee, customer and community criteria, and enables business owners to accurately measure the financial bottom line effect for\u00a0\u201cgreen” investments. \u00a0Effectively, we enable companies to move away from working off a checklist of best practices (and hoping certain investments will yield economic value) to a strategy based on financial modelling that allows them to better budget and market the changes that responsibility brings to an individual tourism business. \u00a0The\u00a0ROI model combines practical criteria for responsible tourism with online data collection, graphing and trend analyses capabilities.<\/p>\n

TRAVINDY:\u00a0<\/strong>What’s the most exciting thing you, your company, or your organisation has achieved so far?<\/h5>\n

\"ScreenGREENLOONS<\/a><\/strong>: In addition to helping companies enhance their reputations, improve relationships with suppliers and customers, and increase their profitability through the ROI model, we\u2019re proud of the\u00a0strategic relationships we\u2019ve build with\u00a0the Global Sustainable Tourism Council, Rainforest Alliance, Sustainable Tourism Certification Alliance Africa and the Instituto de Turismo Responsable, among other organizations.<\/p>\n

As such, we are\u00a0fortunate to be working working at the international level to ensure responsible tourism criteria remain relevant, so that we can help tourism businesses and communities make appropriate strategic investments.<\/p>\n

TRAVINDY:\u00a0<\/strong>What do you need to help you be more successful?<\/h5>\n