Guides win award for environmental good practice

Guides win award for environmental good practice

A group of Scottish Blue Badge tourist guides have won a national award for their efforts to be environmentally friendly.

Select Scotland Tours, which is a team of ten Scottish Tourist Guide Association (STGA) members who specialise in bespoke driver guided and walking tours of Scotland, have won a VIBES Good Practice Award.

The VIBES Scottish Environment Business Awards reward and recognise organisations that have demonstrated significant business benefits from good environmental practice.

With COP26 being held in Glasgow, the 2021 Awards also celebrate the actions and achievements of businesses towards reaching net-zero carbon emissions

SST member Ross Hendrie said that over the past four years it had enhanced its commitment to sustainable and responsible tourism through participation in the Green Tourism Business Initiative.

“Having successfully achieved a Green Tourism Gold Award, we decided to share our story further through participation in the 2021 VIBES Scottish Environment Business Awards,” he said.

Measures taken by the group include making their operations zero waste and carbon neutral.

“This covered things like offsetting all our carbon emission through tree planting with Trees for Life, driver training to be more fuel efficient, promoting walking tours and recycling all our, and guests’, waste,” said Ross.

The group also promoted its green credentials and initiatives to Travel Agents and Destination Management Companies.

In addition, it incorporated green and responsible tourism topics into the interpretation of individual sites and Scotland as a whole.

“That helps protect Scotland and may influence where and how our guests choose to travel in future,” said Ross.

The ten guides involved are Ross Hendrie, Lennie Fuller, Kirsty McAlister, Fraser Parkinson, Aidan Bell, Alasdair Brodie, Pauline Corrigan, Debbie Stevenson, Adrian Laird Craig and Gill Brown.