Rhodes is an important destination for TUI to develop new sustainability initiatives. The Destination Co-Lab Rhodes was founded for this purpose. Experiences and initiatives from the Co-Lab Rhodes are to be transferred to other holiday destinations and thus advance the industry in its sustainable transformation. Both approaches count for TUI: the major strategic initiatives and smaller projects that can be implemented immediately, are role models for other destinations and thus can have a major impact. From now on, for example, the TUI service team on Rhodes travels from hotel to hotel with new bikes. 30 e-bikes and 30 cargo bikes have arrived for the 250 tour guides on the island.
The TUI bikes will help reduce emissions and provide the team with more environmentally friendly transport options. The Rhodes team will use the e-bikes for distances longer than a 40-minute walk, while regular bikes will be available to the team for distances longer than 20 minutes. The number of cars available will be reduced from more than 100 to 60. By 2024, this number will be further reduced. The e-bikes pilot project brings the island one step closer to its goal of being climate neutral by 2030.
“Short journeys by car are thus increasingly a thing of the past. Colleagues in guest services are using e-bikes and bicycles when going from hotel to hotel on the island. Only for longer distances will they continue to use cars. Co-Lab Rhodes is the ideal place to launch the pilot project and gain insights,” says Sebastian Ebel, CEO of TUI Group. TUI Group, the TUI Care Foundation and the governments of the South Aegean region and Greece had joined forces in January 2022 and established the Destination Co-Lab Rhodes to jointly develop a holiday destination sustainably at all levels.
The e-bikes pilot project is part of TUI’s sustainability commitment. At the beginning of the year, TUI presented its Sustainability Agenda. It includes ambitious plans and targets to enable the positive effects of tourism to unfold and to significantly reduce the company’s ecological footprint. Emission reductions are an important part of this commitment to more sustainability. 99 per cent of TUI’s emissions are generated in the airline, cruise and hotel sectors. TUI has set ambitious reduction targets for 2030, which have been validated and confirmed by the independent Science Based Targets initiative. However, emissions are also generated directly in the destinations – albeit in comparatively smaller quantities. With its own strategy for sustainable transport at the destination, TUI is working to reduce emissions in these areas as well and will offer more sustainable alternatives for local transport at the holiday destination. For TUI, every single initiative counts.
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