And the winner of the BEST Ethical, Responsible, Sustainable Tourism Award 2023 is…Kaya Responsible Travel!
Award winners!
When they made this announcement at the British Youth Travel Awards this week, the Kaya team went wild! To be recognized within the travel industry for the things that matter so much to us makes all the hard work and dedication worthwhile. Especially after the last few years of surviving through Covid!
But this isn’t the first time Kaya has done well at these industry awards, hosted and run by the British Educational Travel Association. Our great claim to fame before this was that Kaya were the ONLY organization to have been shortlisted as finalists in the previous iteration of this category – “The Best Volunteering Organisation” for seven years running – between 2012 and 2018. That included twice being named the winners.
Back after Covid.
The BETA awards were canceled during Covid, since no-one was travelling anywhere in that time. But even in that period, the Kaya team kept going – supporting our projects through “virtual internships” that allowed participants to work remotely to keep projects running.
2023 saw the return of the British Youth Travel Awards, but the “Best Volunteer Organisation” category was expanded to recognize many different forms of travel that put ethical, sustainable and responsible travel at the heart of their programs. We were delighted to see this, as our work at Kaya has also expanded beyond volunteer programs to provide many different ways for youth to travel in an ethical and sustainable way.
This being the launch year for this new category, there was a lot more competition and a lot more to consider. But the Kaya team was confident that we were in with a shot of being the first ever recipients of this new award.
We held our breath for the announcement…
“And the winner of the BEST Ethical, Responsible, Sustainable Tourism Award 2023 is……. Kaya Responsible Travel!”
What a great day! Thank you to all Kaya Responsible travel team members, ground teams, partners and participants for everything you do to keep this amazing world we live in a great place for future generations to live in and travel to when our visits are over.
Find out more about some of our award-winning responsible travel approaches and learn about the UN Sustainable Development Goals for your travels
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