Hannah Methven has been announced as the new Sustainability Specialist at Explore Worldwide, as the company’s Head of Sustainability Prue Stone takes up a group-wide role at Hotelplan UK.
Hannah has worked for Explore Worldwide for more than 10 years, and has most recently been responsible for the company’s biggest collection of trips as Worldwide Programme Manager. For the past five of these years, Hannah has been an integral member of Explore’s Responsible Business Forum, working with a collection of employees around the business to drive forward sustainability initiatives and implement changes both overseas and in the UK.
Methven says: “With 10 years’ experience in building and overseeing our tour programme, I’m very close to sustainability developments on our trips – how much we’ve already achieved and what potential there is for further improvements. But I’m also hugely passionate about making changes to our office environment. We have some excellent strategies already in place, we now need to activate those initiatives and continue to develop them further. Involving travel agents, tour leaders, and all the teams at Explore will be crucial to achieving our sustainability goals.”
Hannah, who is currently studying for a Masters Degree in Sustainable Tourism Management, has more than 20 years’ experience of working in the travel industry and has always travelled as sustainably as possible. “While I didn’t necessarily appreciate it at the time, I’ve always preferred a more sustainable form of travel” says Hannah. “Staying in smaller, locally-run accommodation, getting to know local people, and travelling slowly, by public transport etc. It always felt a more authentic way to travel, and nowadays we also appreciate the sustainable nature of slower, community-focused trips”
Hannah replaces Prue Stone who, after two years as Head of Sustainability for Explore, has been promoted into a role of the same title for the Hotelplan UK group. Here she will continue to oversee Explore strategy alongside that of sister companies including InnTravel, Inghams and Santa’s Lapland.
The next steps for Hannah and the Responsible Business team at Explore will be recruiting a Rewilding Partner for the ‘Mitigation’ part of the company’s carbon reduction strategy.
Hannah added: “While we appreciate we’re one of the market leaders at Explore in terms of sustainable travel, there’s still a long way to go, and still so much we can do. I can’t wait to get started!”
https://www.exploreworldwide.com.au/about/sustainability https://www.exploreworldwide.co.nz/about/sustainability
