Theme: Outbound Tour Operator Partners with a Global NGO to Engage Donors on a Large Scale
Relevant Websites:
World Wildlife Fund - Travel Program
Project Background:
Natural Habitat Adventures (NHA) is a specialized tour operator with 30 years of global experience leading nature and wildlife trips across the globe. It has partnered with WWF for more than a decade—advancing conservation in the areas in which it operates its adventures.
Challenge: NHA offers 75 different trips in 40 countries. The diversity of their offerings, complex supply chain of vendors and suppliers, and expansive sales and marketing network presents unique challenges to advance conservation in environments where tourism can be a threat.
Solution: NHA has partnered with WWF to bring conservation, travel and travel philanthropy together. Their initiatives are inspiring travelers, vendors, suppliers and employees to champion conservation while simultaneously building credibility and loyalty for both brands. Over the past decade, the lessons learned by WWF and NHA have been extremely valuable
Project Outcomes & Conclusions:
Lessons Learned: Conservation Travel Partnership
1. Trip Design: NHA & WWF are collaborating to create trips that advance conservationby using, if feasible, vendors and suppliers that deliver substantive financial benefitsfor local communities. Additionally, WWF and NHA have made a commitment toreduce its footprint on every trip, including offsetting the carbon footprint for alloffice and trip-related activities.
2. Move towards an Exclusive Partnership: Prior to 2012, WWF engaged 18 tour operators for its member travel program. Strategically, it made a decision to forge
an exclusive partnership with one tour operator–NHA. This created a more efficient platform to educate and engage 4,000 travelers a year.
3. Train Guides and Field Staff: WWF works with NHA to create and deliver training materials for NHA staff including their marketing team, trip planning staff and the
trip leaders. The conservation resource materials are delivered in a number of ways, including an online community website, webinars delivered by WWF experts and
pre-departure educational materials for the travelers. NHA evaluates the effectiveness of their educational program by testing their guides on the material and through
traveler evaluations. Recently 73% of travelers reported their knowledge of WWF’s conservation work increased as a result of their participation on a NHA/WWF trip.
4.Engage travelers: Communication studies have demonstrated that the choreography of the conservation and travel philanthropy messages during a trip is vital for
traveler engagement and action. NHA and WWF are working together to refine conservation messaging throughout the lifecycle of a trip, including sales and
marketing collateral, pre-departure educational materials, on trip interpretation and post-trip communications. An example of post-trip communication includes World Wildlife magazine, which travelers begin to receive post-trip.
NHA has donated more than $2 million to WWF over the past 11 years and will continue to give 1% of gross sales plus $100,000 annually through 2018 in support of WWF’s mission.
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