SUSTAINABLE TOURISM OF VIRGIN ATLANTIC

Introduction

This report aims to analyse the notion of ‘sustainable tourism’ and its application in case of a case study of an organisation. It also elucidates the significance of sustainable tourism along with its financial, social and ethical perspective. Virgin Atlantic is the organisation chosen for sustainability analysis. Virgin Atlantic is one of the prominent British airlines and is owned jointly by KLM, Virgin Group, and Delta Airlines (Centreforaviation.com, 2019). The company has displayed its core focus on environmental sustainability by using biofuel and focusing on environment-friendly aspects of operations. The company’s sustainability analysis through various tools is succinctly demonstrated below.

Literature Review

‘Sustainable tourism’ demonstrates a scenario of tourism that encompasses the sustainable development principles with the inclusion of its own financial, environmental, and social repercussions at present and in the future (Waligo et al., 2013; An Educational Portal, 2019). Thatcher (2014) speculates that sustainable tourism development displays a type of development that develops the present by sustaining and protecting the future needs of the generations. Wood (2017) propagates that the repercussions of sustainable tourism are widespread across the globe and landscapes. Sustainable tourism development could facilitate in female education, increase longevity, and lowering the mortality rates via funding and economic growth in the backward areas (Buckley, 2012). Harris et al. (2012) suggests that individuals and society, along with the government departments, should refrain from prioritising their self-interests over the social interests that could benefit the entire country and nation in terms of environmental sustainability efforts and promoting sustainable tourism.

Advantages of Sustainable Tourism

Job creation

Sustainable tourism facilitates in creating various jobs in local communities. This helps in increasing the GDP of that country.

Preserves Historical Sites

Sustainable tourism facilitates to preserve and protect historic places because, due to the arrival of tourists, the government also is forced to preserve historical sites frequently.

Protection of the Environment

Sustainable tourism focuses on retaining environmental protection as well, especially in the cases of natural parks and the environments that could reduce the hazardous repercussions of carbon emissions.

Increase in Country’s GDP

Tourism of every kind helps in increasing the GDP of a country. It also helps in facilitating several other businesses attached to the sustainable tourism sector, such as hoteling and others (Breda University of Applied sciences, 2019).

Disadvantages of Sustainable Tourism

High Costs

The downside of sustainable tourism is that it is an expensive option because it would also require proper training of the employees and people involved in implementing sustainable tourism. This is due to the fact that environmental awareness is lesser in even many managerial level employees (Breda University of Applied sciences, 2019).

Application of Sustainable Tourism takes much Time and Change Resistance

The application of sustainable tourism requires time as there is significant resistance to the environmental change that also requires training. It is a gradual process that could not be implemented immediately due to time and cost aspects (Breda University of Applied sciences, 2019).

Types of Tourism

Alternative Tourism

This type of tourism encompasses whether the separate services of tourism or combined products of tourism through supply, human resources involvement, and organisation. It includes horseback riding, ski mountaineering, diving, rafting, biking, snowshoeing, climbing, and caving (Baatbg.org, 2019; Triarchi, 2017).

Soft Tourism

The notion of soft tourism includes social and environmental compatibility, extreme wealth creation, and the newest culture of travelling (Bfn.de, 2019).

Ecotourism

Ecotourism refers to uniting communities, conservation, and sustainable travel. In other words, ‘Ecotourism’ is travelling to natural destinations that facilitate environment conservation, protect the well-being of communities, and encompass education and interpretation. The entire focus is on acquiring knowledge related to landscapes, nature, fauna, flora, along with various habitats (The International Ecotourism Society, 2019; travel.usnews.com, 2019).

Sustainable Tourism Principles

Following are the fundamental principles of sustainable tourism:

Sustainable use of resources: resources should be used sustainably and wisely. These resources encompass social, natural, and cultural resources that facilitate the sustainability of tourism.

Reduction in waste and resource over-consumption: The second principle prohibits wasting the materials and resources excessively, and it also urges to avoid over-consumption of resources.

Tourism integration in planning: It focuses on tourism development integration in strategic and national planning methods that analyses long-term environmental repercussions (An Educational Portal, 2019).

Biodiversity maintenance: Promotion and maintenance of social, cultural, and national diversity are significant to promote the long-term sustainability of the tourism industry.

Providing Support o the local economy: A sustainable tourism should protect environmental damage and facilitate the local economy to maintain value.

Local community involvement: Local people and communities should be involved to improve their quality of life.

Public and Stakeholder consultation: there must be a stakeholder and public consultation, including the tourism sector, to ensure collaborative solutions to the conflicts effectively.

Staff Training: Staff training is essential to integrate sustainable tourism into the efficient processes and enhance tourism product quality.

Responsible Tourism marketing: Full scale and complete marketing of tourism products must be done to spread education about the product and increase the tourist numbers.

Research undertaking: Proper monitoring and research are essential to resolve problems and benefit tourism (An Educational Portal, 2019).

Pillars of Sustainability

Social Sustainability: It focuses on preserving the social capital by investments and services creation leading to constituting a framework for the society. It demonstrates a broader social perspective concerning culture, communities, and globalisation. This notion eyes at protecting future generations by providing them a sustainable society (FutureLearn, 2019).

Economic Sustainability: This factor aims to possess appropriate capital reserves intact to enhance the living standard of people in a society in terms of business conditions. This could be achieved by cost-effective and efficient utilisation of available resources and assets to achieve higher productivity and profits.

Environmental Sustainability: It refers to protecting the environment by enhancing its sustainability for the cause of human welfare. It ensures that the needs of the citizens are adequately met without putting the natural environment at risk. This will then help to protect the future needs of future generations (FutureLearn, 2019).

Human Sustainability: Its core objective is to improve and maintain human resources in the local society. It tends to focus on human health, living standards, nutrition, education, service access, skill development, and investments in these areas. Overall, it focuses on the well-being of humans in a society so that they could foster in all aspects of their life (FutureLearn, 2019).

These are all four sustainability pillars that require principles to be followed to create a better and sustainable society to live in and not only the society and communities, but it also facilitates the tourism sector as well by saving the environment and tourist destinations.

Agenda 21 Policy

Agenda 21 represents a thorough action plan aimed to implement locally, globally, and nationally by the firms of the UN addressing the policies of environmental sustainability and their repercussions on human beings. Its principles were applied by 178 nations and governments at the United Nations Conference on Environment Development (UNCED) in 1992. Agenda 21 had faced much criticism from many critics as they were arguing that Agenda 21 is the second name of the new world order that would mostly not safeguard the American rights and would also side-line other countries. It would also destroy the golf lands, locking lands, increased prices, resources, and provides the age’s old scheme of socialism. After its implementation, the US government could not implement its principles and doctrine for sustainability purposes. It would begin a painful dark age for humanity (Harman, 2019; Sustainabledevelopment.un.org, 2019).

Challenges of Sustainable Development

The critical challenges proposed by the United Nations Organisation encompass the following key challenges to sustainability:

Climate change poses a significant threat to sustainability efforts by escalating the absence of required resources and management.

Malnourishment and hunger are a significant threat to the sustainability efforts because in the famine struck populations; many hurdles are evident while continuing the sustainability efforts (Sustainabledevelopment.un.org, 2019).

Political instability in a country stops sustainability efforts and increases warlike scenarios in such nations.

Lack of finance is another challenge being faced while implementing sustainability in the environment. This is because sustainability is a highly expensive measure.

Urbanisation also poses a threat to environmental sustainability because increasing population and urbanisation forces the people to cut forests that hamper the sustainability efforts (Sustainabledevelopment.un.org, 2019).

Increasing energy needs also force people to cut the forests for cooking and other purposes where natural gas is not available. This threatens the environment.

Sustainable Financing: Sustainable finance refers to any monetary service that facilitates integrating social, environmental, and the governing criteria into investment or corporate decisions. It encompasses the investment and financial activities to promote the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly climate change combating action (HSBC, 2019).

The critical challenges for sustainable finance acquisition include the climate conditions as well and the political instability of any country because these issues then increase the cost of the resources and uncertain climate increases the overall expenses on all aspects and operations leading towards sustainable tourism.

These challenges should be addressed about ethics, and the Corporate Social Responsibility practices should prevail in all departments of the sustainable tourism development process. The sustainability process would only be successful if the organisations and individuals would understand their corporate social responsibility and do something good for the environment.

Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility in Sustainable Tourism

Ethics has a secure connection with sustainable tourism. There are several critical ethical challenges associated with sustainable tourism development, including lack of fair and efficient use of resources, lack of corruption-free handling of finance, inhumane treatment with human resources that facilitate the sustainable tourism actions, and making decisions without the consent of local community or breaking the law. Ethical and sustainable tourism always benefits the local population economically and health-wise (Zebardast, 2018; Clean Travel Connect, 2019).

Environmental Sustainability Laws

There are many treaties and laws related to the environment and sustainability. These laws govern the rulings about air, water, ozone, waste, land, and other forms of pollutions that harm the natural environment. Some rules include the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer. 1985 and Montreal Protocol on substances that deplete the Ozone Layer, 1987. Biodiversity Convention, United Nations Framework Convention on climate change 1992 (UNFCCC) and the famous standards and rulings of the International Standards Organisation (ISO) including ISO 14001 standards regarding the environment of corporations and business firms (Unimelb.libguides.com, 2019).

COP Conference: The COP (Conference of the Parties) relates to a United Nation’s decision-making body that should review and monitor the enforcement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. One hundred ninety-seven territories are exercising their laws.  The 21^st conference of COP that was based in Paris in 2015 had ended up in an International Climate Agreement. This agreement emphasises on taking action to cut down the greenhouse gas emissions along with going below 2 degree Celsius increase in global temperature (OMM,2019).

Sustainability Theories

Neoclassical Sustainability Theory

This notion focuses mostly on human-made capital along with the services and products. It ignores the significance of the natural environment and the well-being it is offering to humanity. It does not primarily focus on the preservation of natural resources without polluting them, such as the climate, clean water, plants and habitats, food, recreation, and many more natural assets of the earth. Most of the organisations that only follow the neoclassical approach have only their personal agendas in front of them, and they side-line the harmful repercussions of their actions on the natural environment (Illge, 2009).

Ecological Sustainability Approach

An ecological approach to sustainability refers to a long-term strategy that focuses not only on the human capital and products as assets but also it focuses on the environmental system and natural resources and assets such as water productivity, forests, soil, and other natural ecosystems that is significant in fostering human health. It finds various ways through which the hazardous repercussions of corporate decisions could be minimised on nature and its assets. For this purpose, different types of natural energy are used in the organisations following this approach in the form of solar energy, wind energy, and other forms of energy that pose a limited negative impact on the natural environment and ecosystem. Biofuel and green fuel is another form of energy that facilitates in the preservation of ecological assets by limiting hazardous repercussions on the ecosystem. Reduction in carbon emissions and waste material recycling are some of the strategies being used by following this approach in the corporate sector (Hig.se, 2019; Illge, 2009).

Public and the Sustainable Tourism

The local society of the UK has shown increased awareness regarding the need for sustainable tourism and its benefits on the environment. This is the reason because of which the public not only now strives to save its surrounding environment but also is focusing more on its health by developing sustainable and healthy eating habits with the promotion of organic foods and decreasing the eating of junk food. The UK government has also played its meticulous role in developing a reliable and effective strategy of educating people about the significance of preserving the environment and reaping its benefits for future generations. The same is the case with the travelling sector, where the population is now focusing more on going to the natural destinations and preserving and saving their natural assets such as forest locations and other natural tourist destinations to protect the environment (Miller et al., 2010). Furthermore, sustainable tourism activities also should address the repercussions of a sustainable environment on climate change as it is becoming a global issue (Scott, 2011).

Virgin Atlantic Case Study

Virgin Atlantic has been focusing on coping with the environmental sustainability challenges in its corporate sector in the new era. The strategic objective of Virgin Atlantic is to reduce carbon emissions by 30 percent up to the year 2021. For this purpose, the company has not only focused on ‘green fuel’ use but also emphasised on promoting sustainability in its aircraft servings and meals (Vegan News, 2019; Iata.org, 2019). The company is also promoting sustainability by using hybrid cars, heat pumps, measuring noise, waste, and water.

Furthermore, sustainability efforts are also evident from its buildings as well, where LED lights are being used along with some construction techniques modernisation. It has also focused on reducing noise by focusing on twin-engine instead of four. In 2007, the carbon footprints were 24 percent cut. Similarly, there was a 22 percent reduction in carbon emissions in 9 years up to 2017.

The company promotes its slogan ‘change is in the air’. Virgin Atlantic has recorded a total annual reduction in carbon footprint by 2.7% totalling 150,526 tonnes in 2017. The primary source of carbon emissions is the aircraft of Virgin Atlantic.

Application of Ecological Approach on Virgin Atlantic

The ecological sustainability approach better describes and fits in the Virgin Atlantic’s environment-friendly strategic plan system. The company focuses on protecting the environment while operating the corporate sector that makes it a better example of the ecological approach follower organisation as a whole in every aspect of its operations. The overall steps it had taken to protect the environment in case of biofuel usage and to highlight the environmental factors in its aircraft cabin environment along with meals is an example of this.

Corporate Social Responsibility at Virgin Atlantic

Virgin Atlantic puts Corporate Social Responsibility practices in front of all activities. The company tends to care for others through various charity initiatives, organising events, or protecting the environment through different initiatives. Virgin Atlantic provides the facility of sustainable food onboard along with its services to ensure ample practices of corporate social responsibility. It also offers a carbon footprint offset opportunity to its consumers intending to support resource conservation and renewable energy projects (Corporate.virginatlantic.com, 2019; Virgin Atlantic Careers UK, 2019).

As a responsible organisation that enforces the practices of corporate social responsibility, Virgin Atlantic also provides charity of 4.5 million pounds in 2015 through its own Virgin Atlantic Foundation that is a charity organisation, to the needy children. This money then is used for ‘change the children’ charity program within the UK and outside the UK to facilitate child education, staff training activities, and other facilitation. Another practice of Virgin Atlantic is enforcing its suppliers to sign its ‘Sustainable Procurement Policy’ encompassing the aspects of animals, people, and the overall environment welfare. On the other hand, the company employees are also provided proper training to run the charity operations, and a supportive environment is also provided to all employees for that purpose. Hence, Virgin Atlantic, along with all its departments and sister companies, are trying to fulfill their corporate social responsibility. Furthermore, focusing on the strategies to decrease carbon emissions is also an action to fulfill the corporate social responsibility to ensure nature-friendly environment without or by minimising the hazardous repercussions on the environment through its operations.

Repercussions of Oil Prices on Virgin Aircrafts

Oil prices largely impact the flights and the aircraft. It increases the overall cost of not the airline but also for the passengers in terms of fare cost. When the oil prices rise, the company has to bear more damage and is forced also to increase the travel fees for all its passengers. It also decreases the profit margin of the company along with its growth rate that observes a significant decrease due to rise in oil prices.

Stakeholder Mapping

Stakeholder Mapping of Virgin Atlantic

L         L                                                                                                                                                     H

H

Power/Interest Grid

This is a framework being used to demonstrate the business stakeholders and their level of power and interest in the business and decision-making process. Following are the key parts of this power interest grid with its application on Virgin Atlantic stakeholders:

High Power, Highly interested people: These individuals have a strong influence on business, and they are more interested in company stakes. Therefore, these should be carefully managed and reported about business matters. For Virgin Atlantic, these would include the CEO, Directors, and shareholders.

High Power, Low-interest individuals: These people need more effort for them to be satisfied, and they just need to be kept satisfied (Mindtools.com, 2019). These include customers, employees, charity organisations, and suppliers of Virgin Atlantic.

Low Power, Highly interested people: These have lower influence but higher interests. They should be kept informed. These include government or competitors etc.

Low Power, low interest: These have low influence and less interest in business decisions. These include low-level workers. Etc.

Future Sustainability Targets

Virgin Atlantic focuses the next targets set by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) of decreasing carbon emissions by 50 percent up to the year 2050. The vision of the travel company is ‘to be the world’s most loved travel company’ in 2018.

Virgin Atlantic Carbon emissions

The company reports the type of carbon emissions on which it has control. The company has divided its emissions into three core types, including scope 1, scope 2 and scope 3 emissions. The scope 1 emissions include its airline emissions accounting for 74.6% of its total emissions. The total aircraft-related carbon emissions in 2018 have increased from 3.978,874 tonnes to 4,110,552 tonnes in 2018. The scope 2 emissions encompass emissions from the electricity that account for 3730 tonnes, and its percentage rate is 0.1% (Corporate.virginatlantic.com, 2019).

Similarly, scope 3 emissions include difficult footprints in terms of its calculation, which is fuel energy-related emissions. It includes fuel use from processing, extraction, and transportation. The scope 3 carbon emissions for both Virgin Holidays and Virgin Atlantic observed a reduction of 115897 tonnes and 27093 tonnes with the percentages of 7.7% and 9.3% respectively in 2018 (Corporate.virginatlantic.com, 2019).

Virgin Atlantic Environmental and Sustainability Certifications

Virgin Atlantic has won the Cargo iQ Quality Certification for exceptional cargo quality services (Waters, 2019). It is also using 20 percent biofuel mixed with the non-bio fuel. This seems to be a kind of greenwash environment in which fulfillment of environmental obligations is a core objective. It has been focusing on plant-based food in its meal as well to promote health and sustainability. The company overall is highlighting green colours in its themes, especially in the case of biofuel and plant-based food serving notions and practices. Its biofuel consists of babassu oil and coconut oil (Squatriglia et al., 2019). The company is also converting its aircraft waste into energy that is being used for its premises. Despite all these efforts, still, it has not yet acquired any proper environmental or sustainability certification, such as the ISO 14001 Certification except the noise pollution reduction certificate that recognises the minimisation of noise and quietness in the Virgin Atlantic aircraft. This certification could be displayed as proof of its environmental sustainability, and the certification awarded is called ‘Quiet Mark Certification’ (Aviationbenefits.org, 2019). This certification could further pave the way for the company to achieve the ISO 14001 environmental certificate as well. The airline is trying to maintain all exceptional quality standards related to environment and sustainability. However, the company has the honor of achieving the status of the first Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) status by IATA in 2008.

However, the partner company of Virgin Atlantic, namely LanzaTech that is also a biofuel supplier of Virgin Atlantic, has achieved Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials (RSB) Certification (Greenaironline.com, 2019).

Google Tools for Virgin Atlantic

Virgin Atlantic has always been following the innovative ideas to deliver its products and services, along with fetching the customer service feedback from its customers as well. It assesses client feedback through Google Glass communications with its customers (Orteccommunications.com, 2019). Other options that the company has to not only get feedback from the customers but also to assess its current and future employees are Survey Monkey and Google Forms (Sites.google.com, 2019). Google Forms could not only be used to test and assess Virgin Atlantic employees but also to get survey feedback from the passengers and the customers.

Furthermore, Virgin Atlantic already uses Google Glass to get customer feedback. These are some technological tools in the information technology that are cheaper and could facilitate the company to improve its performance and assess not only its employees but also the customer satisfaction rate. Furthermore, Virgin Atlantic also uses the audit trail, audit management, document control, safety risks, standards non-conformances, and employee assessment systems of Intelex (Intelex.com, 2019).

Virgin Atlantic Sustainability Panorama Programme

The Virgin Atlantic Sustainability programme primarily focuses on aligning its operations with sustainable systems that focus on the improvement of their environment-friendly aspects. The sustainability panorama includes 30% reduction in carbon footprint and emissions by 2021, utilising cabin waste to produce energy, introducing an entire system of biofuel usage to promote environmental sustainability, decreasing the noise pollution of the aircraft and in premises, and encouraging and serving the plant-based meals to its customers to promote organic and healthy eating that spreads a message to protect the environment and remain healthy (Corporate.virginatlantic.com, 2019).

Virgin Atlantic Risks

The risks that pose threat to the Virgin Atlantic business are elucidated below:

Brexit Implementation: Implementation of Brexit would negatively impact Virgin Atlantic’s business.

Oil Prices: Increase in oil prices impact the profit margins of the company.

Financial Risk: Lack of finance also poses a threat to the company business in the long run.

Political Instability Risk: When there is political instability, the organisation could bear losses in case of any uncertain situation.

Legal Risk: Inclusion of any law that affects the airline business.

Competitors: The decision making regarding the competitors also impacts the company.

Benchmarking

Benchmarking refers to the notion and mechanism of meaningful comparison drawn between the performance of the company’s best practices and the overall company performance.

Internal Benchmarking: it is finding their own organisational leverage instead of looking and analysing other companies.

External Benchmarking: In simple words, external benchmarking is comparing your own organisation with any other outside competitor organisation in any aspect.

Virgin Atlantic vs British Airways Benchmarking

British airways posted an operating profit of 1680 million pounds in 2017 while Virgin Atlantic had posted a loss of 53.1 million pounds in the same year (Investegate.co.uk, 2019). Furthermore, the total revenues of British airways accounted for 12226 million pounds in 2017 whereas Virgin Atlantic had posted its total revenues of up to 2629.3 million pounds in 2017. These figures enlighten that the Virgin Atlantic is behind British Airways, which is also its competitor in many ways. It needs to foster its business by making individual decisions. Even though it is focusing on environmental areas as a whole and that is also a good sign, but still, it is behind from its competitors in the overall business.

Conclusion

All the facts mentioned above make it evident that though Virgin Atlantic has been a significant airline in the UK and it also significantly focusing on sustaining environment by using measures and strategies that could save the natural environment by using biofuel, plant-based meals, waste recycling, and other activities, but still, the company is behind the British Airways and needs more improvement in its financial position to foster its business and minimise the Brexit’s negative repercussions on its business. However, the environmental sustainability efforts of the company are praiseworthy and would help to foster the industry in the long run in the future.

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