Building Strength Through Diversity
As one of the world’s leading global leisure and destination management travel organisations, Kuoni brings together the best and brightest employees drawn from different nationalities and all sorts of diverse cultures and backgrounds. They are the friendly faces and ambassadors who welcome our customers in exotic destinations, our most direct link to hotel partners; they represent us to other business partners and the public at large.
We seek our colleagues' commitment to reinforce the sustainability strategy, each in their own way.
Building awareness
For our employees to be able to contribute to sustainable tourism development, they need to be kept continuously informed, provided with specific knowledge and expertise, and encouraged to engage in lively and active dialogue on the issues concerned. The Kuoni Intranet, the K-net, provides extensive information regarding sustainability initiatives and ensures that all the company’s personnel has adequate access to the latest facts and findings in the CR field. The Kuoni CR team and further members of the Kuoni Group’s CR network also conduct regular training sessions with employees to promote a dialogue and an exchange of views and ideas. The activities here include introducing new employees to the company’s CR activities on their first day at work and holding employee workshops on specific topics.
Making a mark internally
Kuoni is dedicated to engage employees so that they better understand the concept of fair travel in their working lives. Therefore, building upon the success of the previous two Corporate Responsibility (CR) Days in 2009 and 2010, this year's worldwide Kuoni CR Day “Fair Trade & Travel: Aware & Fair” focused on the role of fair trade in tourism and daily life. Thoughts and ideas on how to travel more fairly and how Kuoni as a company can contribute to a more sustainable tourism development took center stage. Employees were also encouraged to take the “Fair Tourist Pledge” based on the Global Code of Ethics for Tourism by the UN World Tourism Organisation.
As part of the CR Day, colleagues worldwide were invited to participate in a recipe competition which featured dishes oriented to their local cultures and which incorporated fair trade products wherever possible. The recipes reflected the cultural diversity of the Kuoni workforce and were shared with all colleagues in the form of a cookbook, the “Good Food Diary”.
Kuoni employees host charity Christmas raffle
Through the annual CR Christmas Campaign, Kuoni employees have supported the charitable organisation Child’s Dream in providing life-saving treatments and surgeries for children in Myanmar. Child’s Dream was established in 2003 as a non-profit organisation dedicated to unconditional help for underprivileged children in the Mekong Sub-Region. Their activities range from health interventions for children to reduce child mortality, construction of education facilities to provide universal basic education, youth employment centers, and high school as well as university scholarships.
Since 2006, Child’s Dream has been working in collaboration with clinics caring for children with critical medical needs from Myanmar. The majority of the children suffer from heart disease, deformities of the rectum or male reproductive system, abnormal accumulation of fluid in the brain, spina bifida or musculoskeletal deformities. The Children’s Medical Fund helps these children to access life-saving treatments and surgeries in hospitals in Chiang Mai and Lampang, Thailand which would otherwise be too expensive for their families.