Peter Jackson, Co-Founder and Owner of event agency Red e2, on why there will be more focus on issues such as conservation, sustainability, identity, inclusion and diversity as incentive travel and international events return…

In March 2020 our world went into a massive holding pattern when the pandemic hit. Everything stopped, and our world changed, forever.

As we start to emerge, many organisations, business leaders, delegates and incentive participants have been taking stock. They are thinking about what is important and what is not and what really needs to change from our ‘before’.

The concept of ‘Purposeful Travel’ has been receiving much greater attention as event planners place considerably more emphasis on issues of conservation, sustainability, identity, inclusion and diversity as they return to travel. Covid has proven to be a catalyst to accelerate changes that were already happening.

What does this mean in practice? In terms of sustainability we are looking at food miles and food waste and seeking to design menus focussed on seasonal products produced as close as possible to where they will be consumed. In terms of conservation we are seeing some well thought through solutions that have been developed by our hotel partners to recycle water and to repurpose what would have been waste energy.

Many of these partners have also developed programmes to recruit and train local people, whilst also thinking about how to improve the diversity as well as seeking to address issues of inclusion. We have seen the development of ‘out-reach’ programmes into nearby small rural communities that support and encourage economic development.

We are actively working with our partners to find and implement initiatives that are kinder on our world, that are more inclusive and give something back to the places we visit.  We believe that the concept of ‘Purposeful Travel’ will be an ever increasing focus of our programme designs and look forward to continue to develop and share these ideas with our partners around the globe.