Zeh before eleven in the breakfast room of an upscale hotel on the coast of Thailand: waiters are busy filling up the buffet. Ten past eleven in the same breakfast room: waitresses and waiters tip untouched croissants, fruit, eggs and bacon into garbage bags. Breakfast is over, they’re about to open the lunch buffet.
At that moment, Sonja Karl had doubts: Is the principle of mass tourism really right? Can what she did as a manager at tour operator Thomas Cook, which earned her money and built a respectable career on, be right? The doubts of the head of the long-haul and luxury travel segment at Thomas Cook increased.
And when Karl was finally pregnant, she realized: This can’t go on like this. “If the child asks me later: What did you do to preserve our planet, I can only say: I sold package tours to Thailand.” No, she didn’t want that, she says in an interview with “Gründerszene”.
And so another idea matured in the Munich native. One thing was clear: she loved to travel. She thought tourism was good and important. Not only does every tenth job worldwide depend directly or indirectly on people traveling, five percent of the global gross national product is generated by tourism.
There is also the issue of international understanding and cultural exchange. “I don’t want to want to live in a world where everyone’s horizon ends at their own front door,” she says.
Travel like from the organic supermarket
It just has to be different. Better. Sustainable. Her vision: When buying a trip, Sonja Karl would like to be able to choose between a conventional product and a sustainable variant just as much as when she buys muesli in the supermarket.
With this desire, the travel expert knew from the market research Reiseanalyse, which is recognized in the industry, that she was not alone: 60 percent of travelers would like to travel sustainably if asked.
The ex-Thomas Cook manager Sonja Karl founded the travel start-up Faircations in Munich
What: Faircations
But only six percent have done so so far. “Why is it still so difficult when it comes to travel? Every industry is tackling the issue of sustainability in some way. Just not mine.”
Despondent people would probably say because it is not possible. Or maybe because it’s binary: more sustainable than a long-haul flight is – logically – no long-haul flight. But it was precisely this logic that Sonja Karl did not want to accept.
“In such a large corporation like Thomas Cook, I quickly reached my limits when it came to implementing the topic of sustainability,” says the 41-year-old. So she decides: then just different. Sonja Karl decided to found.
Favorable in time: In autumn 2019, the Thomas Cook group will go bankrupt. Karl is already out there himself, but quickly calls her former IT manager. Would he like to work with her to build a digital solution for sustainable tourism? Stefan Seibel is quickly enthusiastic.
Sustainable vacation in Mauritius
With him on board as co-founder, Faircations officially launched in February 2021 after a long planning phase. Faircations sees itself as a platform and travel agency that travelers can use to put together flights, transfers, accommodation and round trips in currently 14 countries, including France, Italy, Spain, but also Mexico, Mauritius and the Dominican Republic. South Africa, USA and Canada will be added shortly.
The sustainability highlight: For the flights, the customer buys CO₂ compensation directly via Atmosfair. Karl admits that the fact that long-haul flights are harmful to the climate cannot be ignored. The compensation is a crutch that you have to make do with until better propulsion means such as so-called e-kerosene are used across the board.
The hotels offered on Faircations have all been tested and certified and are characterized by their particularly high energy efficiency or the guaranteed payment of fair wages, according to the founder: “And we donate one percent of the travel price to projects in the target areas”.
The sustainable offer on Faircations also includes the fact that only direct connections and no open jaw flights are offered here. And: For long-distance travel, there is a minimum stay of two weeks. The idea: It would be better to take long-haul flights that are harmful to the climate less often and stay longer.
Furthermore, the founders also understand sustainability in a social sense: Those who book through Faircations can be sure that hotels will be paid for at the latest when the guests arrive. This is rather a rarity in the travel industry: “The payment of service providers by large tour operators often takes weeks because they optimize their own cash flow in this way. It’s totally customary,” says Karl. But not fair.
One stop shop solution for sustainable holidays
Of course there are already other providers and websites through which you can book eco-hotels or who offer sustainable tours to wherever. However, the Faircations founders see their USP in being the one-stop shop that sells sustainable travel packages with the advantages of a classic beach vacation package tour, but with the freedom of an individual trip.
Last summer, Faircations found a well-connected investor from the travel industry: Heike Niederberghaus, Managing Director of the travel agency chain New Travel Reisebüro Vertrieb (NTRV), in which AER Cooperation, the association of independent travel operators, and the airline ticket wholesaler Aerticket each have a half stake , announced their entry.
AER, in turn, includes the travel agency STA Travel and the long-distance tour operator Explorer, which also brokers Faircations trips via its website. Prodyna, a software development and consulting company with a focus on travel – a number of airlines are customers – also invested in a first round.
Get out of the eco corner
In addition to easy availability, Sonja Karl would also like to get sustainable travel “out of the eco corner”, as she says. One quickly thinks of the vegan yoga retreat in the Black Forest. She wants to prove that a luxurious long-distance trip or a beach holiday with children can also be sustainable. Sustainable travel does not have to have anything to do with sacrifice and a lack of fun.
And with a higher price? Not necessarily either, says Karl: “There are sustainable hotels in all price ranges,” says the travel expert. Because it is actually the case that resource management saves the hotels money, for example in terms of energy or food waste.
According to Karl, the problem with the prices is that the customers of large tour operators like her former employer have been sold unrealistic prices as normal for far too long. Spending a week all-inclusive in the Dominican Republic for 499 euros – that would only be at the expense of the value chain.
With a somewhat sluggish feeling, she observed that the big ones continued right there after Corona. “And I understand that, they’re all fighting for survival and want to catch up on what they’ve missed in recent years,” says Sonja Karl. But she is also glad that she is no longer part of this form of tourism.
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