Student Travel Player EF Partners With Thai Tourism on Responsible Travel Effort

Skift Take

It’s relatively rare for a destination marketing organization like Thailand’s to work with a tour operator to help create and promote more sustainably designed tours.

Sean O’Neill

EF Ultimate Break, a tour operator brand within student travel group EF Education First, is rolling out a new Responsible Travel initiative, starting with a partnership with the Tourism Authority of Thailand.

EF will use the service My Climate to track emissions from its itineraries and will donate to the nonprofit WeForest for specific reforestation and farmer education efforts.

This effort will create over a dozen new tours in Thailand. The more intense focus on sustainability in tour development will also be applied to EF’s tour development methodology for the over 100 tours it already runs in Thailand.

“Thailand has been specifically interested in building more sustainable tours to their destination,” an EF Ultimate Break spokesperson told Skift. “We work daily to make responsible tour design a focus and will partner with any tourism authority or destination marketing organization who wants to join us in this effort across all our EF World Journey brands.”

Heather Leisman, president of EF Ultimate Break, said responsible tourism actions include limiting the company’s carbon impact where possible, adhering to strict animal welfare guidelines, preserving landmarks, and supporting local communities.

For instance, one of the new company’s new “highlights of Thailand” tours will include visits to an elephant sanctuary but won’t allow elephant rides or visits to places where animals are used for entertainment, such as zoos or aquariums.

The partnership with MyClimate was developed to build measurement tools to help EF’s market development teams measure carbon impact when they build tours, such as the impact of sending travelers by train or plane and what reductions are possible if electric buses are introduced.

Interest in Sustainable Travel Offerings

A September 2024 survey conducted by EF Ultimate Break and Qualtrics Research of American and Canadian travelers aged 18 to 35 found that 56% said they would book the more sustainable travel choice even if it cost more. 

EF Ultimate Break is one of three tour operator brands within EF World Journeys, an adult leisure travel company that is part of EF Education First. For many years, the parent company has had sustainability efforts, such as collaboration with the Eden Reforestation Projects in Kenya, Madagascar, and Mozambique, which resulted in the planting of nine million mangrove trees.

The latest effort adds new projects. Thanks to a new partnership with WeForest, the company will support projects to regenerate 1,500 hectares in the Mahale mountains, foster the growth of over three million native trees, educate 1,500 farmers, and other activities over the next five years.

Skift’s in-depth reporting on climate issues is made possible through the financial support of Intrepid Travel. This backing allows Skift to bring you high-quality journalism on one of the most important topics facing our planet today. Intrepid is not involved in any decisions made by Skift’s editorial team.