Responsible Tourism

Caring. Understanding. Appreciating. Committed.

HF Holidays has always been committed to acting responsibly as a tour operator and in its 97th year of operation as a membership organisation; community is at the heart of everything that we do

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Bringing people together through memorable holidays in the UK and around the world, is what we do. We recognise that action is needed to protect and preserve the destinations we visit. We want to lead the way in developing holidays that are truly sustainable.

HF Holidays currently work with and donate to a number of organisations including The Air Ambulance, Countryside Management Association, John Muir Trust, The National Trust, Mountain Rescue Teams and supports the Fairtrade Foundation and BTCV.

As a responsible traveller you will already be aware of the many companies offering a carbon offsetting service for the flights that you take and we recognise that you can choose to offset without input from HF Holidays. As an organisation we have decided to look at all the ways we can reduce our carbon emissions as a business and also ways to make it easier for you to travel to your chosen holidays using alternative methods of transport to flights where this is possible.

Responsible Tourism Donations

HF Holidays is very aware of the impact of tourism. Therefore our policy is to use local transport, accommodation and activity providers to distribute economic benefit to the communities visited. Currently we support  two charities and are always looking for further projects.

HF Holidays are overseas corporate members of Nature Kenya and have been since November 2008.

Nature Kenya the society that takes action for biodiversity conservation in Kenya, connecting nature and people.

The charity runs programs which are crucial to conservation especially with the local communities & targeting the youth. They currently have five projects which are as follows:

• Biodiversity Parks Project
• Friends of City Park
• Friends of Nairobi Arboretum
• Important Bird Areas – Nature Kenya coordinates the Important Bird Areas programme in Kenya. This involves national and local conservation advocacy and action for Kenya's 60 IBAs - sites of global importance for biodiversity conservation.
• Training - Many people consider Nature Kenya's regular outings and activities - such as the tree and bird walks and monthly excursions - an invaluable training ground for young naturalists and they also carry out more formal training too.

Uthando– a non-profit organisation based in Cape Town, whose mission is to raise funds from individuals and organisations who have an interest in the region. The money supports a broad range of grass roots, community based sustainable projects with enduring value to the most destitute and marginalised communities in South Africa.

Our 2009 project with Uthando is the Abalimi Bezekhaya, a non-profit organisation working to improve sustainable food production and environmental greening amongst the poor in Cape Town. Their focus is on skills development through training and supporting people and organisations who wish to practice organic horticulture and micro farming. They promote sustainable development while encouraging initiatives which renew, build and conserve social organization, self responsibility and the natural environment.

With the money donated from HF Holidays, Abalimi Bezekhaya plan to purchase various office type equipment - to enhance their tiny admin team’s ability to support the micro-farming movement. Things like decent filing cabinets, healthy chairs, new computer for their new information resource centre and library and monitoring and evaluation section.

In 2008 the project HF Holidays supported through Uthando was the Ipoxo Village School. Our donation allowed the school to purchase new kitchen equipment including a double sink to wash the dishes, pots, pans and plastic bowls and cups for the children.

If you would like to contribute to the projects being supported by HF Holidays, we would be delighted to accept your donation. Please contact our Reservations team.