Pura Aventura, the specialist Latin America and Iberia tour operator, has become the first specialist tour operator in the UK to achieve the coveted B Corp Certification.
Pura Aventura joins this rapidly growing, global movement of organisations using business as a force for good. B Corporation now boasts close to 4,000 members, including the likes of Patagonia Inc., The Body Shop and Danone, with combined revenues of $80bn. It is the only certification that measures the entirety of a company’s social and environmental performance, creating a public and legally binding commitment to balance Profit with People and the Planet.
Thomas Power, Pura Aventura’s MD, said, “We are incredibly proud to be successfully certified as a B Corp. 2020 was a tough year for many in many ways, but we committed to achieve this key ambition because it sets a vital and much-needed benchmark for the future of travel.
B Corp affirms our goal to encourage all to Travel Positive – to deliver exceptional trips that are as friendly to the planet as we can make them, and that are independently certified as being so.
“We are proud to join Intrepid Travel in achieving the exacting standards required by B Corp. We look forward to others in the industry joining us in creating a community of tour operators that offer genuinely verifiable responsible travel worldwide.”
Pura Aventura is regarded as one of the UK’s pioneers in responsible travel. In one of the travel industry’s most ambitious carbon mitigation plans, Pura Aventura balances a carbon mile for every kilometre travelled by a client from their front door and back again, meaning Pura Aventura has been balancing 160% of carbon from all travel (road, air, boat or train) – irrespective of whether they book the international flights for their clients or not, since July 2019.
The company has committed 1% of its revenue to the planet to fund a world class rural community development project in Nicaragua which uses carbon credits as a means of funding. The cost per tonne is approximately five times what is available in less robust schemes.
In the B Corp certification qualifying process Pura Aventura was awarded a score of 81.2 against a peer group average of 50.2. To keep their certification, Pura must recertify every three years and achieve sufficient scores across five key areas of business activity: governance, workers, environment, community and customers.
For more information, please visit Pura Aventura on pura-aventura.com/travel-positive
