Charitable Travel is a registered social enterprise and financially protected travel agency. Every penny of profit earned, everything they do and offer their customers, supports charity fundraising and good causes. Their purpose and mission is to help people with their holiday plans and at the same time support the great work that UK-based charities deliver around the world.
When customers book a holiday or cruise with Charitable Travel, they sacrifice travel agency commission so that the customer can make a free five percent donation to their choice of registered charity through their dedicated JustGiving website. Charitable Travel pride themselves in offering travel expertise, a wide choice of holiday options, quality, great value and a unique way of creating travel-for-good for their customers as a true not-for-private-profit social enterprise. Read more at https://charitable.travel/
The lovely team at Charitable Travel, headed up by Founder, Melissa Tilling, have welcomed Rafiki Thabo Foundation and our great cause into their charity portfolio! This means that if you book your holiday with Charitable Travel, you will be able to donate 5% of the holiday price to Rafiki Thabo – at no additional cost to you! How amazing is that? Visit our bespoke page on Charitable Travel’s website!
Every week Charitable Travel has amazing weekly offers take a look now and support our work with your next holiday booking.
Melissa is now putting her 33 years of travel industry experience into ‘travel for good’:
“I felt when leaving my last corporate role that there had to be another way, some way of combining my love for the people and places of travel, a desire to deliver great service and travel experiences to my customers with the ability to make a difference for society at large rather than any shareholder [….] As a social enterprise there is a guarantee in Company Law and our governing document that every penny of our profit goes to good causes. Our mission is regulator approved, to help fundraising for any registered charity and help our customers give to charity at no extra cost. My hope is that Charitable Travel is successful delivering ‘travel for good’ and our charity and travel colleagues, but most importantly our customers join us making a difference.”
Melissa Tilling, Founder, Charitable Travel
The cynics among us could be forgiven for thinking that the holiday prices are simply inflated to take the donation into account… this is most definitely NOT the case! You will not pay more for the same holiday via Charitable Travel than any other travel agent – and to top that, they have amazing weekly special offers that Rafiki Thabo will post on social media for the early attention of our supporters! Melissa explains:
“We’re a social enterprise and registered as such with the UK Government. Being a social enterprise means we can’t pay our shareholders or owners any bonuses or dividends. Any profit that we make needs to be either re-invested in the company to grow or donated to an approved charity. We’re able to
keep our prices competitive because of this aspect, we don’t want to accumulate profit for ourselves, we want to accumulate donations for charity. We cover the cost of the donation by sacrificing the travel agent’s commission paid by the tour operator.”
Not only will our supporters benefit from fabulous holiday offers, announced weekly, and the
opportunity to donate to Rafiki Thabo for free, they will have the opportunity to attend, for free,
special events such as:
Weekday Wellness – Charitable Travel’s fitness ambassador, Jenny Tomei (personal trainer and nutritional therapist) runs zoom fitness sessions every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning at 8am. Each session starts with a gentle warm up, followed by a HIIT session, a cool-down and finished up with a chat about nutrition or how to stay motivated during exercise regimes. Read more at: https://charitable.travel/weekday-wellness/ where there is also a link to sign up!
Launching a new travel venture in 2020 in the midst of a pandemic, may have put most
people off, but not Melissa: “Yes, some people have said to me, ‘what are you doing
launching in the middle of a pandemic?’” Melissa laughs. “I suppose it’s a good
question – but, well, I think this is exactly the time that we should be launching. There might
not be very much demand for travel right now, but we are going to be ready when the
resurgence occurs. Not just to sell travel, but to help charities that have probably never
needed help more.”
While travelling abroad may not be on our minds at present, there will be brighter times
ahead. We will return safely to sand, sea, sun, and mountain treks. When that time comes,
do please consider booking your holiday with Charitable Travel and support Rafiki Thabo
Foundation at the same time!
The team at Rafiki Thabo are extremely grateful to Charitable Travel for supporting us and especially Melissa for her big heart and fabulous idea. We hope many of our supporters will explore everything Charitable Travel has to offer and donate to Rafiki Thabo when they book their next holiday!