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Rickshaw Travel Partners with ANIMONDIAL

Rickshaw Travel Partners with ANIMONDIAL
27 December 2018 James Brooke

Launching Brand New Animal Welfare Starter Kit.

As part of its ongoing focus on improving Animal Welfare in tourism, Rickshaw Travel is delighted to announce its brand new partnership with animal welfare experts, ANIMONDIAL. Working together, both companies will continue tackling animal welfare in the tourism industry by providing guidance to other small travel companies in the form of a Starter Kit.

The Animal Welfare in Tourism Starter Kit includes advice for businesses on understanding this complex topic, reviewing their own practises, evaluating products and suppliers, and ensuring animal welfare safeguards are firmly in place.

ANIMONDIAL is a consultancy with a vision to minimise tourism’s impact on animals and has worked with Rickshaw on improving its own policies since early but Rickshaw’s own journey began back in 2014 when it was awarded the Travelife Better Places Partner Level for its efforts in sustainability.

In 2016, Rickshaw teamed up with World Animal Protection and signed their elephant-friendly pledge, subsequently removing elephant riding from all Rickshaw trips.

Jennifer Parker, Head of Meaningful Travel at Rickshaw Travel, said “Here at Rickshaw Travel we are committed to protecting wildlife and encouraging travellers to do the same, so teaming up with the fantastic team at ANIMONDIAL felt like the natural next step. The new Starter Kit has fuelled our hopes that by sharing our own approach to animal welfare, we might be able to help more small and medium-sized travel companies get started on their own animal-friendly journey.” 

Animal Welfare has been at the forefront of the news agenda throughout 2018 including the extremes of plastic pollution and most recently, the deforestation of orangutan habitats for palm-oil farming (as highlighted by Iceland’s Christmas AD*).

Rickshaw’s meaningful travel experts have suggested a number of steps travellers can take to help protect orangutans, including avoiding products that contain unsustainable palm oil – as plantations are a major source of deforestation. They also recommend buying FSC-certified products and supporting conservation organisations such WWF, Orangutan Foundation or Sumatran Orangutan Society.

Rickshaw offers several meaningful orangutan experiences including a trip to the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre in Borneo, to see rescued orangutans feed and play, or a trip to the Gunung Leuser National Park to spot semi-wild orangutans.

For information on how to be an animal friendly traveller, please visit https://www.rickshawtravel.co.uk/blog/how-to-be-an-animal-friendly-traveller/

-Ends-

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdpspllWI2o

For further press information, please contact:
Baillie Horwood/Nicole Lovett
Rooster PR
T: +44 (0)20 3440 8930
E: [email protected]

About Rickshaw Travel
Rickshaw Travel is an independent tour operator based in Brighton. They are committed to providing enriching, immersive travel experiences that take holidaymakers off the beaten path and into the heart of local communities.

Meaningful travel – or travelling in a way that everybody benefits from – is the core ethos of Rickshaw: the traveller benefits from enriching experiences where they learn something new (about the destination, culture, a skill or about themselves) and at the same time the local people, animals and/or environment benefit too.

Rickshaw Travel’s individual approach to independent exploration enables adventurous holidaymakers to visit the heart of a destination and experience the real spirit of a local culture. Rickshaw specialises in offering small-scale, authentic accommodation that truly reflects the character of each destination.

Celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, Rickshaw Travel is proud to have built up a team of passionate Travel Specialists who each have extensive travel experience in their own dedicated destinations. They pride themselves on being open and honest about the places they have visited and are on hand to inspire and support travellers. The company’s style of travel is unique – Rickshaw’s dedicated Product Team has worked alongside the company’s in-destination partners to create a choice of carefully selected bite-size trips, typically 2-4 days long, which can be combined to create the perfect itinerary. Rickshaw’s bite-size trips include a range of local excursions, charming authentic accommodation and some transfers to ensure a hassle-free holiday. A minimum of three bite-sized trips must be combined to create a full itinerary.

Protecting nature and wildlife – and encouraging travellers to do the same – is also key for the Rickshaw team. They have recently partnered with Brighton-based organisation, ANIMONDIAL, to develop an animal welfare policy, as well as providing a ‘toolkit’ to help other small travel companies become more responsible. Rickshaw Travel has also committed to supporting the end of elephant riding by signing World Animal Protection’s elephant-friendly pledge and is in the process of auditing trips involving any type of wild animal interaction.

Rickshaw Travel now offers trips in 25 destinations across Asia, Central, South and North America, including Cuba, Vietnam, Myanmar, Thailand, India, Costa Rica, Peru, Borneo, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Chile, Brazil and Japan.

For more information, visit https://www.rickshawtravel.co.uk/, https://www.facebook.com/rickshawtravel/, https://twitter.com/Rickshaw_Travel or https://www.instagram.com/rickshaw_travel/ or call 01273 934 823.