Why travel matters and why I will continue to make travel matter after COVID-19

Accord­ing to its founder Kar­en Sim­monds, inde­pend­ent lux­ury travel agency Travel Mat­ters was built upon the strong sense of respons­ib­il­ity she feels for des­tin­a­tions. In this fresh “GT” Insight, Ms Sim­monds sum­mar­ises her agency’s ori­gin story and philo­sophy and what she’s doing to help com­munit­ies more vul­ner­able to the coronavir­us COVID-19 pan­dem­ic than hers. 

I set up Travel Mat­ters in Lon­don, Eng­land in 1999 after co-host­ing spe­cial­ist hol­i­days in the West­ern Algarve region of Por­tugal. That Por­tuguese oper­a­tion, Nat­ur­al Heights, was part of some­thing called CERT. CERT, which doesn’t exist any­more, cam­paigned for envir­on­ment­ally-friendly tour­ism. There were cer­tain cri­ter­ia you had to meet in order to have the ‘kite mark’. So while I was doing that and think­ing of set­ting up a travel agency of my own I wanted to pick and choose people that had the same eth­os as myself. That’s why I chose to part­ner with AITO, an asso­ci­ation for spe­cial­ist tour oper­at­ors. They have a few hoops they make mem­bers jump through in order to have an AITO mark. They share the same val­ues and eth­os that I have, which is first and fore­most about respect­ing the des­tin­a­tions in which they operate.

In 2009 I set up a Travel Mat­ters cam­paign called Make Travel Mat­ter. This tries to instil the val­ues of good stew­ard­ship; respect for hosts and the loc­al cul­ture; learn­ing about loc­al cul­tures and their his­tory, and about the loc­al envir­on­ment and its land­scapes; and gen­er­ally being respons­ible. We have worked tire­lessly to devel­op com­mu­nic­a­tion and mar­ket­ing around pos­it­ive, sus­tain­able travel, and “giv­ing back”. We endeav­our to show that we are an agency that cares for the plan­et and the people on it. As a travel agent, we send many cli­ents away to hol­i­day des­tin­a­tions where we know they can make a pos­it­ive dif­fer­ence. We want them to not only think about how they can min­im­ise their impact on the envir­on­ment but also cre­ate bene­fits for loc­al com­munit­ies. Make Travel Mat­ter is very much a work in progress. 

As a small busi­ness, Travel Mat­ters is but a drop in the ocean of the travel & tour­ism industry. Our sphere of loc­al influ­ence is centred around SW Lon­don. That doesn’t mean we can­’t pack a punch. We use social media as well as our cli­ent base to deliv­er the mes­saging we want. I feel our voice is being heard by the big­ger com­pan­ies as the mes­sage res­on­ates around the globe. It was encour­aging to see the hasht­ag #maketravel­mat­ter used by a large US cor­por­a­tion about 18 months ago. We are all in this together.

In 2011, a respons­ible tour­ism Mas­ters stu­dent inter­viewed me. Here is an extract:

Where do you see Travel Mat­ters in five years?

I want to be seen as a pion­eer­ing and caring inde­pend­ent travel agency. I hope to have a few more freel­an­cers selling hol­i­days to their cli­en­tele under the Travel Mat­ters umbrella and use us in par­tic­u­lar because of what we stand for. The freel­an­cers will be keen to show they too, share our val­ues and want to grow their rev­en­ue on the back of a reput­able com­pany. That entails more net­work­ing to get indi­vidu­als inter­ested. I want to con­tin­ue driv­ing the Make Travel Mat­ter mes­sage to people and become recog­nised nation­ally as a travel agency who has made a real dif­fer­ence with con­sumers at recog­nising how their beha­viour when they travel can bene­fit com­munit­ies. I need more help in deliv­er­ing the import­ant mes­sages by blog­gers and freel­an­cers who can help with one off nation­al events.

That was inter­est­ing to re-read.

At the start of 2020, we joined the Tour­ism Declares a Cli­mate Emer­gency move­ment and signed the pledge. That seems a long while ago now and not as rel­ev­ant for the present moment, although per­haps our response to COVID-19 will allow us to reshape how tour­ism is delivered going forward.

So now Coronavir­us COVID-19 has caught us all out. We are left feel­ing vul­ner­able, a little lost, and busi­nesses will have to rein­vent them­selves. Instead of feel­ing hope­less, which admit­tedly I did for a few days, I decided to set up a COVID-19 fun­drais­ing cam­paign, the Make Travel Mat­ter COVID-19 Response.

It breaks my heart to pic­ture what is hap­pen­ing in com­munit­ies less equipped to respond to the vir­us, and the con­sequences of gov­ern­ment lock­down (or not in some cases). Reports from India make me phys­ic­ally sick. We have no idea how they are cop­ing phys­ic­ally and men­tally. From my priv­ileged pos­i­tion of com­fort and safety, the stark real­ity of what human­ity has allowed to hap­pen — on our watch! — leaves me guilty as charged. We are all culp­able of the inequal­ity and dis­pro­por­tion of wealth.

I’m going to start get­ting philo­soph­ic­al now so this will end here. How­ever, to con­clude on a pos­it­ive note, I know we can give more, be more con­sid­er­ate, be kind, think about how we can change beha­viour … Donate to the Make Travel Mat­ter COVID-19 Response! 

Mean­while, nature, anim­als, birds are start­ing to flour­ish and bene­fit. We may soon leave our homes with a new under­stand­ing of our rela­tion­ship with the nat­ur­al world.

Can you imagine?

Fea­tured image (top of post): Con­nec­tion mat­ters. Image (CCO) via PxFuel.

About the author

Kar­en Sim­monds, Founder of Travel Mat­ters, in her own words: “I set up Travel Mat­ters in the UK in 1999, after return­ing from Por­tugal where I had a start up tour oper­a­tion spe­cial­ising in activ­ity-based hol­i­days — mainly kite fly­ing, kite surf­ing, pil­ates, and aro­ma­ther­apy. Without a busi­ness plan and reli­ant on income from pulling pints at the loc­al pub, it became obvi­ous that I needed more income than the odd few weeks of co-host­ing hol­i­days. I also became preg­nant, so I returned to Lon­don to set up Travel Mat­ters; a more desk-bound role for me but one I find very rewarding.”