Responsible holidays

In 2015, the United Nations established 17 sustainable goals as new global sustainable goals. Sunweb Group focuses on 4 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as these 4 goals allow us to make the most impact as a travel organization.

The goals we want to contribute to are:

Good health and Well-being

Good health and living environment ensures safety and promotes the (local) economy.

Sunweb Group attaches great importance to the well-being of its employees. We put our employees first and by so we receive the best out of them. As a result, we create committed employees who dare to take responsibility. We provide good facilities and a healthy and safe working environment. We also encourage our employees to follow training courses. An employee who feels valued and satisfied is a good ambassador!

Sunweb Group works at the destinations with partners that offer good working conditions, equal opportunities and fair wages to the employees.

Responsible consumption and production

• We want to significantly limit waste production at our offices, as well as at our destinations. For example, a lot of attention is paid to reducing plastic and invest in products that are recyclable. (cardboard cups/plates and cutlery).
• We stimulate employment in the holiday countries by working with local agents and transport companies, promoting the local culture and local products.
• We promote and organize actions that make beaches and slopes free of waste.

Climate action

• We encourage public transport for our employees.
• Our offices use green energy.
• We do not use gas at our head office. We mainly regulate the temperature of the building with heat and cold storage.
• When purchasing our office supplies, we pay attention to whether they are environmentally friendly (produced) and/or FSC certified.

Partnership to achieve goals

• To achieve our goals as effectively as possible, we are convinced that we must work together. Through good partnership, we can further address and roll out our shared principles and values at global, regional and local levels.
• Sunweb Group works closely with Travelife. Travelife is an internationally recognized management and certification system, for travel organizations and accommodations, that want to do business sustainably.

Step by step, we at Sunweb are working on making our business operations more sustainable. To achieve this, it is crucial to work together and build bridges. Because not only do we want to become more sustainable internally, we also want our partners, destinations and accommodations to act in a socially responsible and sustainable way. Thanks to our international network, we can enter into partnerships and gain inspiration.

• We work with many accommodations on our sustainability ambitions. Many of them have a sustainability label recognized by the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC). The GSTC is an independent international organization that cooperates with the United Nations. One of our goals is that all our partners will have a sustainability certificate within 3 years. To achieve this, we support them and we exchange our knowledge and experience, we ensure that our partners have access to the right tools, training and expertise to make the sector more sustainable. We want to “reward” the accommodations that have a recognized sustainability label with a sustainability logo. This way they are immediately recognizable!

Sunweb is Travelife Certified!

Sunweb recently received the Travelife sustainability certificate. Travelife is an internationally recognized certification program - by the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) - specializing in sustainable management for the travel industry. Unlike many other travel companies, we managed to achieve the highest status, namely Travelife Certified. We have been awarded this certificate because an independent auditor was able to assess us positively on about 255 points regarding sustainability and corporate social responsibility. Of course we carry this certificate with pride and make the current sustainability initiatives even better so that we can earn the certificate again in 2 years' time.

The Sunweb Group Academy is the place for constant development and improvement. Here employees can expand their knowledge and skills, and grow personally and professionally. It consists of a Reflect and Development cycle with different “Learning Labs”.

Within this cycle people reflect on their ambitions, among other things, by having good conversations with the people around them. After the feedback has been collected, the learning action plan is completed. Based on this learning action plan, one can choose one of the Learning Labs that suits his or her current development needs.

The Sunweb Group Academy is a place where employees can learn, grow and develop themselves, together with colleagues.

Sunweb Group operates with the highest standards of integrity and strives to act as a role model in the travel industry. This gives Sunweb Group the confidence of all its stakeholders, such as our customers, partners, suppliers, shareholders and employees. Sunweb Group has drawn up a code of integrity that includes rules of conduct for its management, employees and other persons acting on behalf of Sunweb Group. In this way, our reputation, risks and opportunities are managed and identified. The integrity code contains rules of conduct on the following topics:

• Fraud, Abuse and Whistleblower Policy
• Conflict of Interest
• Anti-Bribery and Corruption
• Combating Money Laundering and Trade Sanctions
• Confidential Information

Internal initiatives

We believe it is important that our colleagues also are involved in our sustainability initiatives. Only then will there be broad support. We create awareness and involvement among our employees through communication, among other things. Through trainings and workshops, the concept of sustainability becomes tangible and specific. We believe that a sustainable corporate culture can only succeed if all employees clearly know what we stand for as an organization, and so can set a good example as enthusiastic ambassadors.

• Our company and our colleagues participate in various charities:
• We are the main partner in the Eneco Clean the Beach project, in which many beaches in Belgium and the Netherlands will be made free of waste and plastic. https://enecocleanbeachcup.be/nl
• We organize fundraising campaigns for KWF, among other things, by participating in the Rotterdam Marathon.
• Our objective is to make a very important holiday destination plastic-free for Sunweb. Together with traffic bureaus, local authorities, hoteliers, agents and colleagues, we are starting up and further rolling out this project.
• We have developed a Sunweb app for our customers: a handy tool to reach and inform our customers quickly and efficiently. This saves us a lot of paper because we no longer need information books and signs at the destinations.
• Each customer receives a short survey, that asks questions about sustainability. In this way we measure how sustainability is perceived by consumers and how we can respond to this even better.

Our offices

We are working to make our offices more and more sustainable. As part of our internal business operations, we have set a number of sustainable goals to achieve this;

• We want to reduce the use of plastic products, and purchase as many recyclable products as possible. For example, we have different waste bins in our offices with which we can separate our waste even better. For example, there are no more trash cans at every desk block, so that plastic bags are no longer used. This saves us approximately 40,000 plastic bags per year.
• Our waste is separated into 3 waste streams.
• Our office building in Rotterdam has the energy label A+.
• We only purchase sustainably certified office supplies.
• For our mail delivery we have switched to Fietscouriers.nl. Where possible, we have our mail delivered by bicycle as much as possible.
• We are increasingly digitizing our work processes. An important part of our digitization process is “paperless travel”. This means, among other things, that we print as few brochures and promotional material as possible, and that we no longer print paper travel vouchers or tickets.
• We offer the option of using so-called shared cars.
• The use of public transport by our employees is encouraged by fully reimbursing these costs
• There is a lease policy whereby cars are only allocated under strict conditions. When allocated, the purchase of an electric car is stimulated.