Environmental Policy

Sustainability at Iceland Travel

Iceland Travel is a part of Travel Connect, a group of travel brands from Iceland. This page is a short summary of our Sustainability Policy. On this page you will find the highlights of our environment policy, you can read the full policy on the Travel Connect website.

Travelife Certified

Iceland Travel has achieved Travelife Certified recognition.

Travelife Certified is the highest recognition level within the internationally recognised Travelife sustainability programme for tour operators and travel agents.

Travelife Certified recognition is awarded following a comprehensive independent on-site audit based on the Travelife Certified Standard.

During the audit, it is verified that our company complies with more than 200 mandatory sustainability criteria covering areas including environmental management, climate action, biodiversity, working conditions, human rights, local communities, sustainable supply chain management, customer communication and responsible business practices.

The audit confirms that our sustainability management system and sustainability practices have been demonstrably implemented throughout the entire organisation and comply with the requirements of the Travelife Certified Standard.

To maintain this recognition, our company is recertified every two years to verify that we continue to comply with the requirements of the Travelife Certified Standard. More information about the Travelife programme, the different recognition levels, the validity of our current Travelife Certified recognition, the assessment process and the publicly available Travelife criteria can be found on the Travelife consumer website: travelife.info/travelers

Responsible Tourism Initiative in Iceland

Iceland Travel has signed the Responsible Tourism statement (“Ábyrg ferðaþjónusta”), an Icelandic tourism initiative led by the Icelandic Tourism Cluster and the Icelandic Travel Industry Association (SAF), under the patronage of the President of Iceland. It focuses on four goals:

Protecting and respecting nature
Ensuring guest safety and fostering respectful interactions
Upholding and respecting employee rights
Having a positive impact on local communities

The Travel Connect Fund

We launched the Travel Connect Fund in October 2025 to support social and environmental projects in the places we operate, and we award grants twice a year.

We focus on initiatives that take place in one of the destinations our brands operate in and that address the UN Sustainable Development Goals we prioritise for the Fund: good health and wellbeing (3), gender equality (5), sustainable cities and communities (11), climate action (13) and life on land (15). Much of this work also supports the four goals of the Responsible Tourism statement. The amounts donated and the projects supported are listed on the Travel Connect Fund page. These donations sit alongside the actions we take to manage our own social and environmental impact, rather than replacing them.

Environmental Responsibility

Below we highlight specific actions and where each one applies. These actions do not mean that all our operations, tours or suppliers have the same environmental performance. For the full policy and more details about our actions please read the full Sustainability Policy.

Our offices

Going paperless has been the biggest change in our own administration. We use electronic accounting and electronic signatures.
Travel documents for clients are electronic, so we print nothing for these bookings.
Reducing waste in our operations.

Energy

Our Iceland office buys electricity and heating that are almost all renewable. Electricity is around 70% hydropower and 30% geothermal, and around 90% of central heating is geothermal. This is how the Icelandic energy system works, and it is not something we arranged. These facts cover our offices only. They do not cover our tours.[

Transport

Transport is the biggest environmental impact of what we sell, and we take responsibility for it. Other companies drive the coaches, but we choose the partners, the routes and the size of the vehicles, so these choices are ours.
We have estimated the carbon footprint of the self-drive and scheduled group tours at Iceland Travel. These are our own estimates and nobody outside the company has reviewed them. Based on the estimates, we buy carbon credits from Kolviður.
- Kolviður works on the concept of capturing carbon from the atmosphere through tree planting. The primary goal of this project is to store carbon in forests, reducing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This project also supports soil formation, wildlife and biodiversity, which all support our environment.
- The credits do not reduce the emissions from our tours, and they do not make any tour, product or our company carbon neutral.

Nature, animals and visitors

We do not sell tours with captive wildlife or performing animals. What we do offer is watching wild animals in their own habitat, such as puffin tours and whale watching.
Much of the pressure on a place is decided when we design the itinerary. We sell trips built around the best-known sites, and we sell trips that go elsewhere. In Iceland, for example, we run tours through the Westfjords and the north that leave out the south coast. We do not claim that this lowers crowding at the busiest places. What we can describe is how we try to spread demand. We run winter departures in most of our destinations, which moves demand away from the summer peak.

For a tour operator, social responsibility is about three groups of people: the people we employ, the people who work for the suppliers we book, and the people who live in the places our travellers visit. Our influence is biggest over our own employees, so most of this section is about them. Where we write about suppliers and communities, we describe what we do, not what we hope the effect will be.

Our employees

One of the benefits we are proudest of is our 7-hour workday, paid as 8 hours, with the lunch break included. We care about the results people deliver, not rigid hours, so employees can shape their day around what works for them and their team.
Twice a year, in spring and autumn, everyone at Travel Connect is asked to answer Gallup’s Q12 employee engagement survey. It is a standard set of twelve questions used by organisations worldwide, so the results can be compared.

Equality and human rights

Our equality policy is based on equal rights for all. Decisions on pay, hiring, working conditions, tasks and training are based on neutral and professional practices that do not depend on gender. You can read our Equal Pay Policy.
We stand firmly against all forms of exploitation and harassment, including forced labour, child labour, human trafficking and commercial and sexual exploitation. For our own people, this is a condition of working here. Our signed supplier agreements forbid child labour, human trafficking, forced labour and discrimination, and a breach can end the agreement. Where no agreement is signed yet, this is still what we expect from everyone we work with.

Suppliers and local communities

Before we start working with a supplier, our procurement team checks that they are insured and have the licences their services need. Our written agreements also require suppliers to follow labour law on wages, working hours and working conditions, and to oppose corruption and bribery. In Iceland, suppliers must hold the licences and permits required by the Act on the Icelandic Tourist Board (No. 96/2018) and tell us if anything changes. We can carry out safety audits and inspections. Beyond these requirements, we encourage suppliers to do more on waste, biodiversity and environmental management.
Contracts are not our only check. We visit suppliers on inspection trips to see the service for ourselves. After the trip, feedback from the travellers reaches us through our travel-trade partner. If a visit or the feedback shows something serious, we take it up with the supplier directly.

Guest safety and respectful interactions

Before travellers set off, and while they are in the destination, we give them safety information from the official weather, road and travel-safety services of that country. When a booking comes through a travel-trade partner, this information reaches the traveller through the agent.
We operate a 24 hour service center at our office in Iceland so we can be reached at any hour while travellers are on the ground.
We keep the safety plan required of licensed tour operators under the Act on the Icelandic Tourist Board (No. 96/2018).
We make a yearly donation to ICE-SAR, Iceland’s volunteer search and rescue organisation. It helps people in trouble in the Icelandic outdoors, both travellers and Icelanders.

Questions

Contact our sustainability coordinator, Kristín H. Halldórsdóttir, at kristin[at]travelconnect.com.

Last updated September 2026. Read the full Sustainability Policy.