LATA Sustainable Travel Webinar Programme
Selling Sustainability – Effectively telling your sustainability story
10th October 2023
Increasingly, consumers are looking for ways to reduce their negative environmental impact in all aspects of their lives. There is a demand on brands/companies and governments to demonstrate their commitment to ethical and sustainable practices. Those that do so are rewarded by loyalty, trust, support, votes or consumption.
One of the biggest challenges travel businesses face in selling sustainable travel is a lack of understanding from consumers of what sustainable travel looks like and the positive impact they can make by travelling sustainably. Telling your story effectively will play a huge role in driving growth in sustainable travel and your business.
We will be joined by MD of Lotus LATAM, Kate McWilliams who will look at the growing importance of sustainability across global brands and destinations. We are also joined by LATA members, who have been hugely successful in communicating their exemplary ethical and sustainable practices.
SPEAKERS:
Kate McWilliams - Lotus LATAM
Kate McWilliams is a founding member of UK-based travel PR & Marketing consultancy LOTUS. In 2018, Kate set up LOTUS LATAM, a division of the business created specifically for the Latin American and Spanish speaking markets.
Kate has represented LATA since 2016 and has wide-ranging experience working on clients across the travel sphere having represented national and regional tourism boards, tour operators, airlines, hotel groups, travel technology and tour operators.
Chloe Berman - Intrepid Travel
Chloe leads PR and Communications for Intrepid Travel, the travel industry’s largest B Corporation. Originally from Glasgow, she started her career in newspaper journalism and went on to join the editorial team on travel trade title Travel Weekly.
Having joined Intrepid in 2014, she has progressed through various PR roles and now leads PR and Communications for Europe, Middle East and Africa. She is responsible for elevating the Intrepid brand through delivering high volume and high quality results across print, online, broadcast, podcast, radio and more. Her goal is to tell impactful brand stories that achieve strong reach, engagement, and brand sentiment.
Naomi McKee - Senderos
Naomi McKee is the PR Manager at specialist Lat Am representation company Senderos. She is a former ITN and BBC journalist, a seasoned traveller and wildlife enthusiast, who loves sniffing out great travel stories and presenting them to the media.
Working closely with allies at The Long Run and other sustainability focused organisations, she enjoys the challenge of arranging adventurous press trips, but her greatest passion is helping to focus media attention on the benefits conservation efforts can bring to any trip. Since joining Senderos in early 2015 Naomi has travelled extensively across South America visiting our partners with press and tour ops. She is always seeking out new ways to engage the wider world with Senderos partners’ latest news and advocating for travel as a force for good.
Rochelle Turner - Exodus
Rochelle is the Head of Sustainability and Community at Exodus Travels, a tour operator offering small group and self-guided adventure holidays in over 100 countries. Her role is to ensure that the company genuinely and actively embeds its mission of Improving life through travel across all aspects of the business.
Rochelle has spent her career conducting consumer, economic, market, ESG and policy research within the tourism sector and has had senior roles at Ipsos-MORI, TUI, Which? (the UK’s consumer organisation), and as VP Research & Sustainability at the World Travel & Tourism Council. Before joining Exodus, she was fortunate to look after research & insight at MaCher and grow her knowledge and practice of both B Corp and TEAL self-organised structures.
Rochelle’s interests are particularly focused on ethical consumption both in terms of understanding why consumers purchase in the way that they do and in supporting the evidence base for how businesses can benefit through adopting more sustainable practices. She is the co-chair of the UK group Travel by B Corp, a trustee of The Travel Foundation and a trained beekeeper!
Megan Parkinson, Moderator - LATA
With over 20 years of experience in the LATAM travel industry, Megan has deep regional knowledge and expertise and has been a driving force in establishing and promoting sustainable tourism practices across the continent.
Megan worked for a number of specialist tour operators including Journey Latin America and Chimu Adventures before joining LATA in 2014. At LATA, Megan has grown the membership significantly to represent over 350 travel and tourism businesses operating to and around Latin America.
In 2018 Megan spearheaded LATA’s Sustainability charter; a milestone initiative establishing a guiding set of sustainability principles for the network. This laid the groundwork for LATA’s sustainability strategy and the implementation of a strategic training programme in collaboration with the Long Run. This transformative three-month training programme empowers businesses to embed sustainability into their day-to-day operations.
Megan was a founding member and is a trustee of the LATA Foundation; LATA’s charitable arm that supports grassroots initiatives in Latin America including a number of important conservation projects in popular tourism areas. During the pandemic, Megan initiated the successful ‘Peru 25 for 25’ campaign, raising more than £18,000 to provide essential food parcels for out-of-work Inca Trail porters in Peru.
With her wealth of experience, Megan is a prominent figure in the fields of responsible tourism, sustainability and conservation.