Prince Harry Launches Sustainable Travel Initiative ‘Travalyst’ With 5 Big Industry Players

Prince Harry launched a sustainable travel initiative Tuesday in Amsterdam, a city that has been impacted by excessive tourism, the Associated Press reported.

The initiative, called Travalyst, is a partnership between the Duke of Sussex and five major industry partners: Booking.com, TripAdvisor, Visa, Chinese travel company Ctrip and Ctrip-owned Skyscanner. It will work to reduce the travel industry’s contribution to the climate crisis, boost conservation and environmental protection in tourist destinations, work to make sure more tourism money goes to local communities and find solutions to over-tourism.

“Sometimes when we appreciate the world’s beauty, we heighten its fragility,” Prince Harry said, as The New York Times reported. “It’s a paradox. But in our enthusiasm we can put great strain on the natural wonders we travel to see as well as the communities that call these places home.”

The initiative comes as travel is on the rise, the Associated Press reported. The number of trips taken every year has more than doubled since 2000, according to the World Bank. In 2018, people around the world took 1.4 billion international trips, a figure that was reached two years faster than the UN’s World Tourism Organization predicted. The initiative also comes amidst growing awareness of the travel industry’s impact on the environment and the climate. Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg recently completed a high-profile sailing trip to New York City in order to avoid flying. Harry and his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, also faced criticism for flying on a private jet this summer to visit singer Elton John, the Associated Press reported.

While Harry’s travel initiative has been in development for three years, Kensington Palace told The New York Times, some criticized the timing of the launch, The Guardian reported. The companies involved could not provide details and said that more announcements would be made in the next 18 months.

Prince Harry addressed his travel habits in Amsterdam.

“I came here by commercial. I spend 99 percent of my life traveling the world by commercial,” he said in a video shared by Bloomberg News. He said he could not rule out the use of private jets for security reasons, but always tried to balance out his impact by offsetting his carbon dioxide emissions.