Culture Trip Dedicates Entire Global Workforce to Day-Long Sustainability Hackathon

Travel Scale-Up collaborates with experts Fortitude Partners to focus all its staff on championing sustainable travel solutions 

Culture Trip founder & CEO Dr. Kris Naudts calls on all businesses around the world to set aside at least one working day a year to tap into in-house talent to help tackling climate change collectively and globally    

LONDON and NEW YORK, Feb. 12, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Culture Trip has announced the out-takes from its inaugural company-wide sustainability hackathon.  

The transatlantic hackathon saw Culture Trip's entire global team dedicate a whole working day to the topic of sustainability. The company partnered with Fortitude Partners who help businesses place sustainability at the core of their operations.

The hackathon was the brainchild of Culture Trip founder & CEO Dr. Kris Naudts, who rallied his 300 team members across offices in London, New York & Tel Aviv to down tools and work in cross functional teams to come up with tangible ideas to make Culture Trip a more sustainable business. The hackathon also explored ways to promote sustainable tourism to the nearly 20 million unique users that the site and app attract every single month, and its 8+ million followers across it social media channels.  

The hackathon came as consumers become increasingly aware of the impact of the travel industry on the environment. In 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that aviation contributes 4.9% of all human-caused climate change. Last week, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) reported that global demand for air travel rose 4.2% year-on-year yet this was viewed as something of a slowdown by the industry.

Culture Trip's own Cultural Mindset Study has found that 37% of millennials claim that they try to limit the amount they travel due to environmental concerns, compared to just 15% of the baby boomer generation. 

Teams were tasked with focusing on some of the key areas that are directly impacted by the travel industry, such as carbon, climate, biodiversity and water. Stand out ideas that emerged from the trans-Atlantic hackathon included:  

• 'Elec-Trips' – an Instagram-delivered virtual road-trip which uses technology to take on some of the most iconic stretches of the earth's roads
• Travel Pure – an international collaboration of local content creators with expertise in sustainability, tapping into Culture Trip's unique international creator community. These Sustainability Champions would promote sustainable tourism in their areas, generating economic benefit to their local communities. 

Commenting on the hackathon, Culture Trip founder & CEO Dr. Kris Naudts said,

"I encourage every company to down tools for a day to collectively think about ways to solve for this worldwide crisis. Travel as an industry has historically lagged behind in terms of suggesting ways in which we can operate sustainably. It is now time for us all to join forces and to start taking action. 

As well as being an incredible day of innovation and team building, the calibre of ideas that came from the hackathon was simply incredible. The pitches clearly demonstrated the care and passion that our employees feel for the cause and we can't wait to put ideas into action in 2020. We hope this is the first of many such initiatives." 

A video highlights package of the hackathon can be viewed at:  https://jwp.io/s/YFvvp2eh 

About Culture Trip

Culture Trip inspires its users to discover, plan and book trips around the world. Headquartered in London with offices in New York and Tel Aviv, it features stories that reveal what is special, unique and meaningful about a place, its people and its culture. In-house creative teams together with a global network of more than 600 freelance creators produce destination-based stories from around the world, including articles, videos, photography, illustration and animation. Founded by former psychiatrist Dr. Kris Naudts, Culture Trip has been dubbed one of the UK's fastest-growing companies by Forbes UK and won more than 20 awards in 2019 alone. The website attracts approximately 18M monthly unique visitors with 2B+ video views in the last two years alone. The app has been downloaded 2.6M+ times. With a social media reach of 8M+, Culture Trip brings the world to everyone, and in doing so, brings us all closer together

Video: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1089667/Culture_Trip_Hackathon.mp4