With the Indian subcontinent now able to protect its once rapidly diminishing Tiger populations from extinction – helped significantly by ‘Tigernomics’, the conservation dependant economies they are now creating – the demand for travellers to see these mythical creatures in the wild has soared, both from foreign visitors but more especially from the huge domestic travel market, ensuring at last that tigers are increasingly valued alive rather than dead.
TOFTigers, the well-known campaign to drive nature travel sustainability across South Asia, has signed an MOU with Bookdifferent.com to help travellers enjoy nature friendly lodgings when on their stay in some of India and Nepal’s finest tiger and wildlife reserves.
bookdifferent.com is an innovative green travel data-organization and a hotel booking site with a mission, namely, to make the travel sector more sustainable. How? By making it easier for consumers and businesses alike to book sustainable accommodations. Bookdifferent.com is the first organization in the world that has brought together over 14.000 certified hotels and has calculated the CO2-emission of over 2 million accommodations all over the world.
Over 70 of India and Nepal’s finest lodges and resorts in 26 tiger and wildlife destinations across the Indian subcontinent including famous tiger habitats like Ranthambhore (over 70 tigers), Kanha (over 100 tigers) and Chitwan in Nepal (about 70 wild tigers) are now featured as ‘staygreencheck’ properties, having undergone TOFTigers PUG certification scheme, an International GSTC recognised eco-certification scheme for wilderness based properties.
As Bookdifferent.com CEO, Lonneke de Kort highlighted “The PUG ecolabel’s performance on our staygreencheck, was a 100% match on all sustainability pillars. The PUG is one of the most comprehensive labels we work with. We are proud of the partnership TOFTigers and bookdifferent.com. It enables our customers who are interested in wildlife and contributing to tiger protection to make the right choice by booking lodges that take their responsibility in this field”.
TOFTigers Chairman, Julian Matthews ‘We are delighted with this partnership that allows travellers a real green choice. With conscious `consumers increasingly demanding action on sustainability wherever they travel, so both the lodging industry’s efforts and the demand by consumers for greener forms of travel must increase to ensure real sustainability happens. So this partnership with bookdifferent.com is a natural progress for us, especially when the subcontinent is undergoing rapid and often unsustainable change.” Says TOFTigers Founder, Julian Matthews.
Note for editors: This is a joint press release
For further details or images for TOFTigers – call Julian Matthews on +44 1963 824514
For further details or images for bookdifferent.com – contact Lonneke de Kort on +31 640756303