Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have announced a global travel initiative and they want you to sign up.
It's called
travalyst.org and along with key partners, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex want travellers to have a minimal impact on the environment.
It's described on the site as being "led by HRH The Duke of Sussex, Travalyst is a bold new global initiative founded by Booking.com, Ctrip, Skyscanner, TripAdvisor and Visa, with the ambition to change the impact of travel, for good."
The aim of the campaign is elaborated on: "We want to be the driving force that paves a new way to travel, helping everyone explore our world in a way that protects both people and places, and secures a positive future for destinations and local communities for generations to come."
View this post on Instagram
We are excited to announce the launch of ‘Travalyst’, a global initiative striving to change the impact of travel, for good. Partnering alongside key travel industry giants @Bookingcom, #Ctrip, @Skyscanner, @TripAdvisor and @Visa_US, our aim is to spark a movement to transform the future of travel, putting communities at the heart of the solution. We believe in the power and importance of travel. We also have a shared responsibility to our planet and to each other. • “I want to start with a little bit of background as to specifically why I’m here today, because as you may know, I am not a tourism or business expert, but through my travels I have observed the unique relationship between community and environment, and have noticed something alarming. There wasn’t the symbiosis or connection there needed to be and I wanted to understand why. I am one of those people fortunate enough to have a platform and I want to use it to tackle hard problems, in the hope of finding solutions…and that’s how Travalyst was born” - The Duke of Sussex The name #Travalyst comes from The Duke and partners viewing our role in sustainable travel as catalysts to accelerate positive changes in travel. Travel + catalyst = Travalyst #Travalyst aims to make travel more sustainable, to help protect destinations and benefit communities long into the future, and to enable consumers to make more environmental friendly choices whilst traveling. The Duke of Sussex, having invited the founding partners to start the conversation, believes that the organisations - with operations in nearly every country, hundreds of millions of customers that use their products every day, and business relationships around the world - have sufficient influence and the critical mass necessary to catalyse real system change in the travel industry, for the benefit of destinations, communities and ecosystems. To discover more about the new initiative, visit www.Travalyst.org
A post shared by
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex(@sussexroyal) on Sep 3, 2019 at 2:15am PDT
In a message posted on Instagram from their official account, he explains the importance of sustainable travelling and why it's important to protect the environment: "As tourism inevitably grows, it is critically important to accelerate the adoption of sustainable practices worldwide; and to balance this growth with the needs of the environment and the local population."
There are messages from the corporate sponsors who are part of the campaign.
Last month, Prince Harry was criticised for reportedly being flown-in by private jet to Sicily for a climate change conference hosted by Google.
Critics questioned why they had used transport with massive carbon footprints to arrive at a climate change event.
