Here at Virgin Holidays we are committed to providing you with the best holiday possible, both now and in the future.
Our world
We believe in making a difference. In our customers' eyes, the Virgin brand stands for value for money, quality, innovation, fun and a sense of competitive challenge.
Our vision is to be worldwide - world class
Our mission
Our mission is to grow a profitable company which people love to travel with and where people love to work. Our dedication to excellence is recognised through the many prestigious awards we have been honoured with.
Take a look at some of our recent awards.
Our people
As a company, we think the people that work for us are our most valuable asset. We put a lot of time and effort into looking after our staff and strive to be the employer of choice in the tourism industry:
We are an Equal Opportunities Employer and as such we endeavour to ensure that no job applicant, employee or customer receives less favourable treatment or is subject to harassment on the grounds of race, gender, colour, marital status, national origin, religion, disability, sexual orientation, age, ethnic origin or hours of work.
- We encourage our employees to focus on the development of skills, competencies, knowledge and experience and use a range of flexible approaches to achieve genuine employee development.
- We provide a large number of company and voluntary benefits for our staff, as well as generous travel, discount and workplace benefits.
- We have introduced a well being policy that incorporates issues such as flexible working, stress management and healthy living.
- Virgin Holidays promotes a culture that is fun and dynamic. These aspects of working for Virgin are reflected in our Company Values. They sum up our personality and we try to bring them into everything we do.
Your future
We support sustainable tourism and want to do our best to ensure that your children and their children are able to enjoy a holiday as beautiful as the ones we offer you today. We recognise that demonstrating responsible business practice towards the environment and the communities within which we operate, is key to our achievement of this long term goal.
Our policy
Virgin Holidays fully supports the principles of corporate responsibility and sustainable tourism and we are taking steps to implement these principles throughout our business:
- We are committed to continually improving our performance in the context of sustainable development and the management of tourism.
- We comply with local, national and international laws and regulations applicable to our business activities.
- We oppose all illegal and exploitative forms of tourism (such as child labour). Any incidences bought to our attention will result in an immediate investigation.
Environment
Maintaining the quality of the worlds environments is crucial to our long term success in being able to offer you high quality holidays in some of the most beautiful and fascinating places on earth. To this end:
- We will endeavour to minimise our environmental impacts and support activities and projects to protect and restore the natural environment.
- We seek to assess the negative impacts of our operations across the world and take steps to address these.
We work with industry colleagues through the Federation of Tour Operators (FTO) to improve standards across the industry and develop supply chain tools such as Responsible Tourism Guidelines for hoteliers.
- We support The Travel Foundation in its efforts to preserve natural environments in holiday destinations and spread the economic benefits from tourism across communities. (For more information see www.thetravelfoundation.org.uk)
- We provide our customers with information on responsible tourism and encourage them to act responsibly when on holiday.
- We raise awareness of the importance of environmental issues amongst staff and customers.
- We encourage our customers to offset the carbon emissions generated by their
holiday by using the Air Travel CO2 calculator at climatecare.org
- We recycle plastics, paper, aluminium cans and glass at our UK head office and provide fair trade tea and coffee for our staff and visitors.
- As a member of the Virgin Group of companies we are committed to implementing responsible business practice to save energy and water, minimise waste and maximise opportunities for recycling. (For more info see www.virgin.com)
- We seek to encourage our partners, suppliers and sub contractors to improve their contribution to sustainable development and will work with them and share information to assist this.
Community
As a company, Virgin Holidays aims to have a positive impact on the communities in the destinations we operate in and we like to give something back where we can. To this end:
- We encourage greater co-operation within the tourism industry and between this industry, educational establishments and the public sector in order to further sustainable tourism.
- We encourage the empowerment of developing world nationals to run their own tourist industries by funding a Caribbean Hotels Association scholarship programme for up to 3 students per year to study for degrees in Tourism Management at US and UK Universities. The programme is in its first year and the current beneficiary is Miss Rhozi Williams from Dominica who is studying for a BSc at Florida International University. Click here to find out more www.caribbeanhotelfoundation.org
- We support the community within which our UK head office is based through various recruitment, educational and charitable initiatives.
- Our Customer Care department provides exceptional service for customers with special needs. The Queen Elizabeth Foundation for Disabled People have awarded Virgin Holidays an EASE award as the best tour operator for disabled holidaymakers.
- We work with the Federation of Tour Operators to improve employment conditions for both overseas nationals employed in the tourism industry and staff in the UK.
- We support Virgin Unite, the Virgin Group charitable initiative set up by Richard Branson, by encouraging our staff to volunteer for charities involved in a range of community work, and we allow them time out of work to do this. See www.virginunite.com for info on how to get involved yourself!
Charitable support
As a company we are proud of the contribution made by our business and our people to a huge number of charitable causes.
Virgin Holidays supported a range of charities last year including:
Grenada Hotels Relief Fund, Grenada Explorer, St Joesphs School and Crochu
School in Grenada, (following Hurricane Ivan in September 04) The Disaster
Appeals Emergency Committee, (following the Tsunami) The Caribbean Hotels Foundation
NCH, Winstons Wish, Kids Company, Kikass, London Air Ambulance, Kidscape, 4Children,
CLIC, Homeless Link, Railway Children Youth at Risk and Help Counselling centre,
through Virgin Unite Your Finest Hour (AIDS/HIV campaign) Born Free.