Sustainability and Impact

We were founded on strong principles about the way travel should be, how people ought to be treated and the role businesses can play in their communities.

With our employee ownership model, charitable trust and B Corp certification, we have structured our company around those values and are always looking for ways to increase our positive impact.

Our annual
Impact Report

This year we made further progress on our Carbon Neutral by 2030 pledge, including beginning to tackle the difficult question of emissions from guest travel. We reassessed our tree planting mission in light of new thinking, launched our Overtourism policy and began working with accessibility specialists to improve the equality of our places and websites. Read about all our successes, challenges and ambitious goals in our Impact Report 2023-24.

Charitable
trust

In 2018, we set up the Sawday Trust, which now owns 24% of the company.

It will use its share of profits to address the impact of tourism on climate change through research, action and support of relevant causes.

Working
better

Our mission guides us to look for socially and environmentally responsible ways to do business. We’re fair, honest and human with our guests and owners. We choose our brand partners with care and pay our taxes at every level.

We are enormously proud of our B Corp certification, which shows we meet the highest standards of social and environmental performance.

Employee
ownership

In 2018 we entered into a unique version of Employee Ownership, in which the company was divided between the employees (52%), a Charitable Trust (24%) and the Sawday family (24%).

It means that every member of our team is a part of deciding our future. It’s made Sawday’s an even better place to work and means that it will always be true to the values it was founded on.

Community
Champions

Our Community Champions are charities, Community Interest Companies (CICs) and other purpose-driven organisations or cooperatives who receive subsidised Sawday’s membership to aid the causes they support.  

Our marketing and PR means they can focus less on making ends meet and more on doing good.

Protecting
nature

With treeplanting under increasing scrutiny, we examined our conservation work and decided on a thorough review of our practices, while still maintaining support for local projects.