LONDON: Prince Harry has said he wants to learn from travel firms ‘keeping sustainability at the heart’ to help rebuild a ‘better’ industry as he announced a virtual summit hosted by his eco-tourism scheme.
Travalyst, which was launched by The Duke of Sussex, earlier this year, brought together some of the biggest operators in the travel industry including Visa, Booking.com and Skyscanner to help travellers pick low carbon options more easily and chose destinations that will have more benefit to local communities.
According to it’s website, the scheme is set to host a global summit on Thursday 30 July which will ‘bring together stakeholders from across the travel and tourism industry to listen, learn and explore how we can help the sector to evolve in the process’ of rebuilding after the coronavirus pandemic.
In a statement released online, Prince Harry said: ‘As the travel and tourism industry begins to recover, we want to learn from those who are keeping communities and sustainability at the heart of what they are doing to build back better.’
Announcing the summit online, Travalyst detailed that there was a ‘critical need for a global reimagining of the international travel and industry.’
The statement goes on: ‘Harnessing the collective power of our partners and platforms, we want to support the industry in building back, with more resilience; by working alongside communities and destinations who are reliant on travel and tourism to ensure sustainability is part of their recovery efforts.’
The summit will host several sessions throughout the day to accommodate participants from around the world.
Speaking on his motivation for launching the summit, Prince Harry said: ‘The global pandemic has brought the world to a standstill, and in the process destinations and communities who rely on travel and tourism for their livelihoods are facing a challenging and uncertain reality.
The royal said he hoped the industry could learn from those ‘keeping sustainability at the heart of what they’re doing’ in order to ‘build back better.’
Prince Harry launched Travalyst during his final engagements as a senior working royal and asked delegates ‘just to call him Harry’.
After the travel and tourism industry was hard-hit during the coronavirus crisis, Travalyst now hopes to help rebuild the sector with long-term goals in mind.
When launching the eco-travel scheme earlier this year, organizers said the Duke had ‘made it clear’ that ‘we are all just to call him Harry’
There were reports earlier this month that the Duke planned to shift focus to the eco-travel scheme, having stepped back from royal duty in March of this year.
According to People magazine, the organization has also altered the wording of it’s website to reflect the step back that Prince Harry has taken from royal life by removing the term ‘HRH’ from it’s site.
In February, Meghan and Harry announced they would no longer use the word ‘royal’ and would lose their HRH titles after tense discussions with Buckingham Palace.
