This is our way of contributing to a brighter future.
Background and our mission.
That both tourism and sports significantly influence our world is obvious. Travel unite people, increase cultural understanding and can also bring financial benefits to parts of the world, but at the same time it can effect the environment negatively. Sports can create happiness, togetherness, benefit your health and also create a sense of belonging to children. But it can also cause bullying and stress within youth teams, and even be an environment where child abuse can be present.
At OLKA Sportresor we want to believe that the positive impacts are often bigger then the negative, but just to believe in something does not make things happen. With over 40 years in the business and as a leading company in sports tourism in Scandinavia, we have decided to take some responsibility and hopefully influence more to do the same. We wish to contribute to a more sustainable tourism industry, help to create further positive effects of travelling and sports, and most of all increase the understanding and interest for this. It's therefore with a great sense of hope and pride, that we launch our new project OLKA Foundation.
OLKA Foundation consists of two parts, both contributing directly to the environmental and social aspects of sustainability, both locally and globally. The best of all is that your booked trip will directly add value, whether it's a youth group going to a training camp, or some friends booking Premier League tickets. For every single person travelling with OLKA Sportresor, 15 SEK (approx 1,3 EUR) will go directly to below projects divided equally. During 2023 we are expecting over 40 000 travellers which would mean 600 000 SEK (approx 51 500 EUR), and the forecast is a major increase in the amount of people travelling with us for the coming year.
We are convinced that above projects generate positive impacts in several ways, and that the commitment from OLKA Sportresor will give this a major boost. However, the most important thing without a doubt, is that we make these issues visible among our much valued travellers, whom for the most part are young athletes. The more young people that reflect upon, and question these impacts, the better it is. Then we are getting closer to honestly say, that sports and travelling is not just fun, but also very important.
Further background.
Tourism is one of the biggest industries in the world, and it's been evident for a long time that it influence our world in several ways, both positive and negative. For the last couple of decades at least the term sustainable tourism has become the most common, and probably correct, way to describe what all of us in the tourism sector should strive for. The definition of sustainable tourism by the UN Environment Program and UN World Tourism Organization is following:
"tourism that takes full account of its current and future economic, social and environmental impacts, addressing the needs of visitors, the industry, the environment and host communities.”
This is of course something that can be experienced as quiet abstract or at least hard to grasp, so some examples connected to tourism are described. In terms of the environment, it's quite known for example that flying cause an impact on the ozone layer which is negative for the environment, but on the other hand many airlines now invest in research to find new fuel and strategies to diminish these impacts. It's also thanks to tourism and the income it generates, that some national parks and wildlife probably can be even more protected and preserved than they would have been without tourism, which is positive for the environment. When it comes to economic impacts, tourism can create jobs and bring further income to many regions, but it can also be a force that increase prices locally which is a negative effect for the inhabitants there. In terms of social impacts tourism can increase cultural understanding, but it can also make local residents annoyed when tourists don't behave or show respect, so this can be both negative or positive.
Whether there are more positive or negative impacts from tourism, is obviously difficult to say and it probably depends from time to time and place to place. To be able to measure this, is of course then a really difficult task. When OLKA Sportresor decided to start addressing these questions in the autumn 2023, we therefor wanted to begin with something that really can be measured, by creating OLKA Foundation. If this project cause a more positive outcome, than the partly negative effects of us being a part of the tourism sector, is hard to say. We won't pretend that this is enough and we are certainly not satisfied with only these efforts, but we believe it's a good way to start. We are also proud of investing a considerable amount of our own profit to the project, and decided early not to put the pressure on our customers. We believe it should only be down to the company to compensate for travellers trips. Therefore, we will not ask anyone if they want to contribute. We just do it automatically on their behalf, at no added or hidden cost. We foot the bill. And very happily so. What we do instead, is to try and highlight in our communication that these issues are important, so our travellers more likely reflect upon this in the long-term perspective. Knowing that most of our travellers are young, we really believe that getting them to reflect about sustainability is one of the most important things we can do.
The next steps for OLKA Sportresor is to look at our day-to-day business operation and start to improve more and more of our services, products, processes and even office routines. All new sustainable efforts or routines we start with, we will always try to announce on this website. And the actual foundation, that's here to stay.
In short: the future looks more hopeful with the help of travel of both body and mind.