Here are some photos of Prince Harry today in Amsterdam. News of the trip was apparently embargoed for royal reporters, meaning no one could report on the trip ahead of time, but reporters were told about the trip and they were there to cover this event. So what is the event? WELL. Prince Harry is announcing a new partnership between “Booking.com, SkyScanner, CTrip, TripAdvisor and Visa,” which will aim to change the travel industry. The project is called Travalyst and it’s being done under the banner of the SussexRoyal Foundation, although Prince Harry has apparently been working on it for two years, back when he was part of the The Royal Foundation with his brother and sister-in-law. Omid Scobie had the nicer take on the initiative:
Prince Harry is on a mission to transform the travel industry. The Duke of Sussex is in Amsterdam today to officially launch Travalyst—a new program that aims to explore and improve conservation efforts at tourist destinations around the world, tackle climate change, and help local communities grow economically.
“Travel has the unparalleled power to open people’s minds to different cultures, new experiences, and to have a profound appreciation for what our world has to offer,” the prince said in a statement. “As tourism inevitably grows, it is critically important to accelerate the adoption of sustainable practices worldwide and to balance this growth with the needs of the environment and the local population. Bringing companies, consumers, and communities together is our best chance to protect destinations and ecosystems for future generations.”
Travalyst won’t encourage people to travel less, but it will help tourists make environmentally friendly decisions, such as providing tips for offsetting carbon emissions and supporting local communities at tourist destinations. The goal is to give the consumer more eco-conscious travel options when booking trips and educate them on the impact tourism can have on the environment. In the months ahead, Travalyst will launch new industry collaborations and initiatives focusing on different areas of tourism sustainability, including preventing wildlife damage and ways to tackle the growing problem of “over-tourism”—which is literally seeing some of the world’s most beautiful places being loved to death.
“I have learned so much from the experiences I’ve had and the people I’ve met in places like Botswana and the Caribbean, Nepal and New Zealand,” Harry said in a speech at Amsterdam’s A’dam Tower. “What is clear across this vast landscape is our world faces environmental challenges of unprecedented scope and scale.” A source close to the prince tells BAZAAR.com that the royal felt the project was “hugely important, as the number of people traveling is rising rapidly but individuals are not being given enough opportunities to do it in a more sustainable manner. By bringing together these industry heavyweights, they are able to help lead the way in protecting this planet.”
Critics will be quick to point out Harry’s own widely-reported use of private jets to three different destinations in the month of August. During today’s launch, which he flew to on a commercial flight, the prince said, “We can all do better. While no one is perfect, we are all responsible for our own individual impact; the question is what we do to balance it out.”
So… is Travalyst a site? Is it a resource for tourists so that people can use more eco-data about where to go and how to travel? It sounds interesting.
The Daily Mail’s Rebecca English – who has been caught out lying about the Sussexes multiple times – did a Twitter thread about the launch and Harry’s comments to the press in the Q&A session. English tweeted that “In a Q&A session Harry defiantly insists he will continue to travel by private jet ‘to ensure the safety of my family’. Fair play for answering the answer honestly, but I’m not sure it is helpful. Claiming MRF wouldn’t be safe on a commercial plane won’t cut it with many…To put it in context, though, Harry says he spends ‘99 per cent of my life travelling the world by commercial’. When he travels privately, he says, he does offset the carbon emissions.”
All of that being said, did you hear that the Duke of York flew on a private plane from Spain back to England for crisis talks with his team because people keep talking about how he raped sexually trafficked minors given to him by Jeffrey Epstein?
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
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