News

THE Association of Independent Tour Operators will be launching its first set of responsible tourism awards in January.

The body is introducing the awards in a bid to encourage more operators to look at their impact on the environment and the destinations they sell.

Chairman Martin Garland said: “We want to recognise best practice. Many AITO operators are already undertaking cutting edge environment initiatives and we wanted a forum to celebrate this.”

For a full report of last weekend's AITO conference in Turin, see the Travel Weekly newspaper on December 3.