Sustainability policy

What follows is the footprint our companies and employees can control directly, the daily habits of our offices. That is rather the point: it is the part of our footprint we control directly.

What we can control varies from office to office. We have five: Iceland, Edinburgh, Stockholm, and two smaller ones in Italy and Germany. Only in Iceland and Edinburgh are the building services (energy supply, waste handling and cleaning) ours to choose. Our Stockholm office is our own space, but it sits in a building that arranges those services for its tenants, and the Italy and Germany offices are desks in shared buildings on the same basis. Where a claim below depends on a choice we actually make, we name the offices it covers.

• Going paperless has been the single biggest change to our own administration. Electronic accounting, electronic signatures, and new document procedures have reduced the paper we use.
• Travel documents are the exception: two of our brands, Nordic Visitor and Iceland Unlimited, still print them for travellers. Several things have gone from those documents altogether: the plastic wallets the vouchers used to come in, the printed road books Nordic Visitor once provided, the envelope that carried the welcome letter, and the printed airport welcome signs, which the coach company now displays digitally. What we do still print is printed double-sided.
• Some of our office furniture is bought second-hand, and office equipment is bought new. When we replace furniture we try to pass it on rather than throw it out, either at our Iceland office through a reuse service such as Efnisveitan, or by donating it. Our shared desks in Italy and Germany come furnished.
• At our Iceland and Edinburgh offices, where waste and cleaning are ours to arrange, we separate whatever the local systems will take, and the two lists are not identical.
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  In Iceland: paper and cardboard, plastic, organic waste, aluminium and glass, with the bottles and cans that carry a return fee collected by the Green Scouts movement.  
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  In Edinburgh: paper and cardboard, organic waste, glass, cans and plastic bottles, our provider there taking bottles rather than mixed plastic. At both offices, the cleaning products we buy are environmentally certified.
• For these two offices, our waste companies send us figures every month for each category, so what we throw away is measured rather than estimated. In Stockholm, Italy and Germany, waste handling and cleaning come with the building and we hold no equivalent data.
• From the start, our kitchens have been stocked with reusable glasses, cups, plates and cutlery rather than disposables.
  Where we can, we buy office supplies, catering and printing from local businesses.  

• Iceland is the fortunate case. We buy our own electricity and central heating there, and both are almost entirely renewable: around 70% hydropower and 30% geothermal for electricity, and around 90% geothermal for central heating. This is how the country works rather than anything we arranged, which is rather the point: the hotels, restaurants and services our travellers use in Iceland draw on the same renewable grid. It is one of the genuine advantages of the destination.
• In Edinburgh, we chose 100% renewable electricity from UK wind farms via SSE Energy Solutions.
• Our Stockholm office uses electricity described by its supplier as 50% wind and 50% hydropower, arranged by the building rather than by us.
• At our Italy and Germany offices the electricity supply is the building owner’s arrangement, so we make no claim about it.

• One of the benefits we’re proudest of is our 7-hour workday, paid as 8 hours, with the lunch break included, not on top. We also build our culture around flexibility: we care about the outcomes people deliver, not rigid hours, so employees can shape their working day around what works for them and their team.
• We also offer employees a workcation: the chance to work away from home for up to 20 days a year, whether that’s spending time at one of our other offices in Europe, visiting family, or simply enjoying a change of scenery.
• Other benefits vary between our offices, shaped by local law and local arrangements. They include parental support, transport allowances, and ongoing training in wellbeing, sustainability and safety.
• Twice a year, in spring and again in autumn, we ask everyone at Travel Connect to complete Gallup’s Q12 employee engagement survey, a standard set of twelve questions used by organisations worldwide, which is what makes the result comparable. Employees answer directly, and Gallup scores the responses against its own global database. In our spring 2026 survey, 91% of our people took part and our mean engagement score was 4.46 out of 5, placing us in the 77th percentile of Gallup’s database, higher than 77% of the organisations Gallup benchmarks. Participation across the last four rounds has run between 88% and 93%. These results cover Travel Connect and all its brands.
  

• Employee training is coordinated through Travel Connect Academy, which ties learning to both company strategy and individual roles.
• Some courses are mandatory for relevant employees, including new employee orientation days, cyber security, mentor training and sales training. Most of the rest is offered rather than required, and taken up by choice: first aid and safety, weather forecast training, courses for those returning from parental leave, and wellbeing sessions on subjects such as sleep and focus.
• For a company whose staff advise travellers on where to go and what conditions to expect, what our people know is not a side matter. It is part of what we sell.

• Travel Connect's equality policy is based on equal rights for all. It is written to comply with Icelandic law, where the company is based, and our offices in other countries follow local employment law as well.
• We provide an inclusive working environment where employees can balance their work and personal life. Opportunities are also created for all employees to develop and grow. This means that employees are appreciated as individuals, regardless of their gender (and other protected characteristics). All assessments are based solely on relevant experience, skills, education, and the employee’s ability to accomplish their tasks. Our intention is to ensure equal status and equal rights for all genders. We accomplish this by basing decisions regarding remuneration, recruitment, working conditions, assignment of tasks, education and professional development on neutral and professional practices that are not affected by the gender of the employee in question. You can find Travel Connect’s Equal Pay Policy here. To achieve our goals, we regularly measure progress in equality issues. This may include salary analysis, gender ratios and measuring employees’ attitudes towards gender equality at Travel Connect.
• Travel Connect stands firmly against all forms of exploitation and harassment, including forced labour, child labour, human trafficking, and commercial and sexual exploitation. We are committed to protecting the dignity, safety, and human rights of all individuals, with particular attention to the well-being of children and adolescents. For our own people this is a condition of working here. Where we have a signed agreement with a supplier it is contractual rather than aspirational: our agreements prohibit child labour, human trafficking, forced labour and discrimination, and a breach can end the agreement. Where an agreement is not yet in place, it remains what we expect of anyone we work with.
• Travel Connect has been awarded the Jafnvægisvogin (Equality Scale) in 2024 and 2025 for its commitment to gender balance in leadership. While Iceland leads globally in gender equality, corporate leadership remains an area for improvement. The Jafnvægisvogin initiative, led by the Association of Businesswomen in Iceland, recognises companies making measurable progress towards gender balance in management and leadership roles, aiming for a 40:60 gender ratio by 2027. Our executive team already meets that ratio. We believe balanced leadership fosters stronger performance, diverse perspectives, and more inclusive decision-making. And with the initiative’s slogan “Jafnrétti er ákvörðun” (“equality is a decision”) in mind, we remain committed to building a more inclusive future.
  

• Before we start working with a supplier, our procurement team checks that they are insured and hold the licences their services require. We work with local suppliers that meet our standards for traveller comfort and safety. Where we hold a written agreement, those standards are contractual rather than aspirational.
• Our supplier agreements require compliance with labour law on wages, working hours and working conditions, and opposition to child labour, human trafficking, discrimination, forced labour, corruption and bribery. Suppliers in Iceland must hold the licences and permits required under the Act on the Icelandic Tourist Board (No. 96/2018), provide proof on request, and notify us promptly of any change, suspension or revocation. Failure to maintain them can end the agreement immediately. We reserve the right to carry out safety audits and inspections, with access to documents, facilities, equipment and staff. Beyond these requirements, we encourage suppliers to go further on waste, biodiversity and environmental management.
• Written agreements are sent to suppliers above a set annual booking value, which covers around 80% of the suppliers we work with. Not all of those agreements have been signed yet, and completing them is work in progress, so the requirements above describe our contracted suppliers rather than all of them.
• Contracts are not our only check. We visit suppliers on inspection trips to see the service for ourselves and, for the brands that sell directly to travellers, we run feedback surveys after the trip; where a booking comes through a travel-trade partner, feedback reaches us through that partner. Where a visit or a survey raises something serious, we take it up with the supplier directly.
  
• We recommend local accommodation, restaurants and experiences to travellers, so more of what they spend stays with the communities they visit.
• We encourage travellers to shop locally and support small businesses along their route, and we listen to feedback from local communities to shape how we guide them.
  
• As part of our Travelife certification process, we survey our supplier network to understand where they stand on sustainability. Our first survey (January 2026) heard back from around 37% of suppliers surveyed, with over 70% of respondents locally owned and operated, and more than 94% reporting active local sourcing. We’ll repeat this survey annually and use what we learn to offer more targeted support.
  
• We check all our marketing and promotional material for accuracy, and we only advertise what we can actually deliver.
  

Guest safety and respectful interactions

• Before travellers set off and while they are in destination, we provide safety information drawn from the official weather, road and travel-safety services of the country they are visiting. Where a booking comes through a travel-trade partner rather than directly from the traveller, that information reaches them through the agent.
• Every brand has someone reachable at any hour while travellers are on the ground: some are covered by our service centre in Iceland, others by a 24-hour helpline with a member of staff on call.
• Itineraries flag the specific places where travellers need to take particular care. On guided tours the guides receive the same travel documents, so they know where to give that warning in person; on self-drive itineraries the traveller has it in writing.
• In Iceland we maintain the safety plan required of licensed tour operators under the Act on the Icelandic Tourist Board (No. 96/2018). We do not hold equivalent formal risk assessments for our other destinations.
  
• We record every incident and act on anything we can prevent.
• We make an annual donation to ICE-SAR, Iceland’s volunteer search and rescue organisation, which responds when people get into difficulty in the Icelandic outdoors, travellers as well as Icelanders.
  
• Respect for the places people visit is part of what we tell them. Our travel documents explain local culture and customs, and flag when travellers are entering a national park or a UNESCO World Heritage site. This is done by all our brands, with the exception of Senlinmao.