Policy Aims
MKJ Philosophy
At MKJ, we do not take travel simply as a matter of business, but rather, we consider travel is about how we look at the world, and how we look at ourselves.
- We strongly believe that travel is more than just sightseeing, but rather “sight-doing”.
- The fun learning experience of clients is key to the success of a trip.
- The interaction with the grassroots local communities is most likely, if not always, the touching moment of a memorable trip.
- Travel helps us to be less ignorant and arrogant about other cultures.
- We believe everyone SHOULD make a difference, and CAN make a difference in our world by planning a properly managed journey.
- Last by not least, travel in China is a great way to understand and document the historical transition of this great nation.
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Economic Responsibility
- Choose locally managed service suppliers to avoid any cash flight. In China, there are many multinational hotel chains, but there are also more and more locally run hotels that are as good as the internationally managed hotels. In most cities, there are also a lot of western fast food chains, but unless necessary, we will arrange our guests to try local cuisines in popular Chinese restaurants.
- Purchase trip supplies from local manufacturers wherever applicable. When buying food supplies for a camping trip, we normally select food brands that were locally produced. Take red wine for example, many local breweries are making excellent Chinese red wine that is as good as many imported brands.
- Employ local guides from the destination areas. For family trips, we will normally employ one guide for each trip from each destination province or city. Take Yunnan province for example, the most popular tourism destinations are Dali, Lijiang, and Zhongdian. Each city is known for a different group of ethnic minority, namely, the Bai, the Naxi and the Tibetans. So a local guide from the local ethnic group will be chosen to make sure the group have a better chance to understand the local traditions, and customs. At the same time, the local economy is benefiting from this employment.
- Give away welcome or farewell gifts from local artisans with traditional cultural elements. In Beijing, if there are children in the group, or it is a student group, we normally will buy some small gifts for them as an incentive to participate our educational programs. Most of the gifts were traditional Beijing toys made by some local handicraftsmen, and sometimes, we even invite the artisans to give a demonstration at the site.
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Environmental Responsibility
- Collect trash when travel in the city or in the countryside, and bring them back to proper recycling centers or dropping point. We will always have a few trash bags prepared for our tour leader, so when disposal of wastes, we will make sure there is least environmental impact on the surrounding of our visit. In some cases, we will mobilize our clients to do some volunteer work by cleaning one small area of the countryside which we visit.
- Encourage local suppliers to consider energy-saving policies:
I. Avoid overheating the transportation vehicles in winter: Chinese drivers sometimes were over concerned about the western travellers, so they turn the air-conditioning to the highest level to heat the bus, but this is not necessary in most cases. A lower level of heating will save money for the driver, and save energy for the planet.
II. Turn of the engine if the vehicle is expected to wait the clients for more than three minutes to cut emission; There are more than 3.5 million vehicles in Beijing already, and there are still more than 1,200 cars hit the road each day. By turning off the engine as much as possible, we contribute a little to our already fragile environment.
III. Choose hotels or restaurants with solar power or other green energy sources; In some of the less visited destinations, bio-gas energy is becoming very popular. Wind turbines and solar power stations are also installed in many provinces. Wherever we have this kind of choice, we will give more business to this kind of suppliers.
IV. In office operation, try to minimise the usage of printer, so as to save paper consumption. Think before print and print only when necessary.
V. Use energy-saving light bulbs to save electricity.
VI. Train our staff to turn of the lights or other electric appliances whenever possible.
VII. Use some waste paper or other materials to design and make simple stationeries like the pencil holder etc.
- Suggest to clients take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints. Although most western clients are very well educated to respect our environment, some will still be tempted to take a small souvenir like the flowers. At the briefing session of the tour, we will normally incorporate some tips to remind our clients.
- Encourage clients to minimize waste. There are simple ways to do this: our tour leaders will prepare markers so that clients can mark their own water bottle with their name initials to avoid waste.
- Encourage clients to recycle. On the bus, we will prepare two different bags, one labelled for recyclable wastes, the other for non-recyclable wastes.
- Support conservation projects by local NGOs. There is a Beijing based NGO (www.brooks.ngo.cn) working on a number of pilot projects in Inner Mongolia, helping the local Mongolian community to halt further desertification in their area. MKJ is helping them to tailor responsible tours for their donor company’s employees, so that the donor will continue to support their efforts.
- Give clients information about the conservation area they visit beforehand. In the above mentioned Inner Mongolian villages, we will give out leaflets with information on the desertification situation of China in general, with suggestions on how we can help to save the current environmental crisis in the vast northern China.
- Encourage clients to hike or walk in the nature reserve or the minority community unless necessary. This is a very good way of exploring a small area, or neighbourhood, which will also help to save energy in turn.
- Suggest clients to save water in certain dry area. Clothing can be washed once returned to the major cities where water resources is not in severe shortage.
- Encourage clients to bring their own toiletries. This will help the local hotels to save a lot of the one time throw-away supplies, and helping saving resources.
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Social Responsibility
- Provide the local guides and other service staff with sufficient professional training opportunities, so that they can be more in a more advantageous position in getting the business. Chinese hospitality industry is still very young, and we do our best to give our local partners and guides sufficient training, so that they have a very high standard of service skills. This will contribute to the growth of local tourism market in general.
- Encourage and support local staff to start their own hospitality business like restaurants or small family run hotels. With the right concept in mind, some of our local partners or even guides will invest in local restaurants, which will help the destination to create more job opportunities so that the younger generation will stay in their hometown, and in turn the local culture succession will be guaranteed.
- Educate clients to respect the local custom and tradition, especially in an ethnic minority area. In Xinjiang, when we are on our Silk Road journey, we will normally instruct our clients to prepare long sleeve shirts, and long pants for the mosque visits, as for Muslims, this is very disrespectful.
- Support NGOs by incorporating related information in the client reading material, arranging visits to NGOs’ project sites, meeting NGO representatives for briefing session etc. There are many NGOs working in the geographically remote areas, but these areas are normally culturally and naturally rich in resources. Even in Beijing, the old town is so historical, but the commercial hutong tour is becoming increasingly touristy. So we are collaborating with one of the cultural preservation group, the Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center (www.bjchp.org), to provide our hutong tour services. This helps to give the NGO’s project more exposure, and more opportunity to receive funding from individual donors. Information about NGOs will also be included in the pre-departure information package for the clients, so that clients will have a better understanding about the background of the destination area.
- Encourage clients to visit locally managed handicraft store. In Beijing, we organize clients to visit workshops with local craftsman demonstrating the work of their own creation. For example, on the Guozijian street, we have a very good local partner who has been operating a small shop selling all kinds of local handicrafts made by himself, featuring old Beijing toys. Many clients like it very much, especially they can learn how each piece of art work was produced from the raw materials.
- Suggest clients to prepare stationeries if a local school is part of the itinerary. Normally, our clients will prepare books, and we will help to set up a small library or book corner for the local school with pre-trip coordination. There are cases that our clients helped the school to purchase some heating facilities and even simple medical equipments after the trip.
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Responsible Travel News
- 5 Ways to Give Back You don’t have to sign up for a volunteer vacation to do good while you travel. We asked social activist Michael Norton, author of 365 Ways to Change the World, for five simple steps to give back to the communities you visit.
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