Viatu is a curated virtual travel agent offering trips of your choice, from safaris to honeymoons, family friendly and gorilla watching. Every aspect of the trip has sustainability in mind, including using local partners, caring for the environment and educating and encouraging the guests to help too with a Travel Pledge.
Learn more at https://www.viatu.com/en
[00:00:00] Bring in more revenue while saving money and differentiate yourself from the rest of the pack vying to win those guests by becoming more environmentally friendly.
[00:00:11] We will show you how easy it is and how cheap it can be if not free and share all the opportunities available.
[00:00:18] So join us each week as we take another step along the green path. That find out more with my special guest today, Barbara from VR2. Hello Barbara, how are you? Hello, how are you, Deborah? Very good, thank you. And thank you very much for joining me today, thank you. Barbara, we always start with the same question.
[00:01:41] I'd like to know,
[00:01:42] where did your own sustainability journey start?
[00:01:45] How did you get started and when?
[00:02:45] could also be a force for good, so understand that better.
[00:02:49] That one thing led to the next and then met my now co-founders of Viatu.
[00:02:54] And Viatu means something in a particular language?
[00:02:58] Yes, it means shoe in Swahili.
[00:03:02] So with the idea of just leaving behind our own footprints,
[00:04:06] tourism dollars, if they say in the destination, of course, which is also why then the second pillar is looking at the partners or service providers, accommodations, activities. We
[00:04:12] always prioritize locally owned service providers, but overall, anyone who will be on board,
[00:04:18] we have a sustainability survey they have to think about it, it's just automatically done. And then of course, we're managing our own operations. That's the fourth pillar. We're in the process of becoming B Corp certified and also working with SIF, which is a Swiss organization on on formerly having our sustainability framework. And we're a member of 1% for the
[00:05:42] planet. So once we are profitable, like contributing doing your research ahead of the time, trying to, you can learn a bit of the key phrases so that when you go to the destination to reminding you not to be respectful of the environment of not interfering with wildlife
[00:07:00] or the biosphere,
[00:07:04] maybe your reusable water bottle, Yeah. Oh. And so your net positive, we've discussed this before, positive and negative, you know, the connotations, but your net positive in terms of the destination, the partners, the impact of travellers and your operations, it's all covered.'s how I felt going through your process, except it's not just accommodation, it's the whole holiday. So can you explain the customer journey booking a holiday through you? Yeah, so the intention is that you can plan
[00:09:44] your entire itinerary within minutes in a single platform, But of course, we would be available for those that work here. And from what I understood, Wendy says, when you say you, it's curated, you give the destination. I love the experiences Safari, Big Five, Mering, Gorilla, Honeymoon. Fantastic. So the thing is, let's say I click the boxes that I want and give you a window of budget.
[00:11:04] Does that mean you will come back to me the culture, it's the local community that benefit until local. Can you expand a bit more on that? Absolutely. So definitely one of the key criterion goals for us is to try and keep as much of the revenue
[00:12:24] within the destination, right?
[00:12:26] So, I mean, but it is just the start. On your website, you touch on over tourism, sustainability, over tourism, balance, things like that. So how do you combat over tourism from a sustainability point of view? So our belief is that by making it more accessible, so and we are using technology to make it more accessible
[00:15:03] in that it also, then that would be a nice balance. as a user. We are sort of also targeting this generation of travelers that are digital native that are used to being able to do everything from their phones and that as soon as it might require a phone call or writing an email, it just becomes
[00:17:40] a hurdle that they don't want to overcome. So that's what we're
[00:17:44] trying to address as well. So I guess I don't know if it's like
[00:18:53] experience. You know, last year was fortunate enough to do a trip myself in in Botswana and one of the most memorable nights was staying what they call a sky bed. So it's this elevated platform in the middle of the bush. So, I mean, there was you're looking around and seeing what you're contributing to. Yes. This is what it used to be like, and let's keep it this way. And how absolutely wonderful that image and the imagery of that kind of sounds amazing.
[00:20:23] Yeah, it sounds like guilt free travel.
[00:20:26] Yeah.