The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Australia has recently compiled a case study featuring Intrepid Travel as a best practice in sustainability. Intrepid currently operates in over 100 countries, with offices in 25 and 900 employees. In May 2011 they won the coveted Tourism for Tomorrow Award.
An excerpt follows:
Intrepid Travel Pty. Limited (Intrepid) was established in 1989 by co-founders Darrel Wade and Geoff Manchester initially to provide adventure trips to Thailand. Sustainability, or to be more exact Responsible Travel, was and still is the fundamental principle underpinning Intrepid products.
There appear to be three distinct phases in Intrepid’s sustainability journey. Years 1 to 12 were the foundation years with hands-on owners, an ex-pat team of trip leaders and a focus on development of Responsible Travel product.
Intrepid is now getting towards the end of the development period (years 13 to 23) with a more mature governance framework, specialist teams at a central head office, broader Responsible Travel product range around the world, with mostly local trip leaders. During this period, Intrepid has also developed and implemented a sustainable development strategy and will be reporting its integrated social, environmental and economic performance publicly for the first time in 2011.
Intrepid is just about to enter the maturity years as a leader in Responsible Travel putting in place the systems, processes, people and controls in preparation for a public listing in the future.