Community & Environment

Blue Marine Foundation

As part of our commitment to climate and nature action, we’ve joined our sister companies across the Travelopia Group to partner with Blue Marine Foundation. Our objective is to help conserve and restore the stunning coastlines and marine life habitats that enrich your time on the water. From the Mediterranean to the Caribbean, Kenya to Indonesia, these protected “blue carbon ecosystems” have the potential to remove and store thousands of tonnes of carbon every year. They will also help protect a rich diversity of coastal and underwater wildlife, including endangered species. 

To help, customers can add an optional donation per person to their next yacht charter booking. Donations go directly to Blue Marine Foundation and will be used to support all areas of their incredible work. No matter how big or small, all donations are valuable.

Our partnership with Blue Marine Foundation was launched in November 2023, in addition to the £1 million we will contribute as part of Travelopia over the next 3 years, our customers have donated an additional £30k. Customers can support Blue Marine every time they make a booking with us.

British Virgin Islands Skipper Academy

We welcome thousands of visitors to our largest base is in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) every year. In recent times we have seen the demand for skippered charters continue to increase. Unfortunately, there aren’t many educational pathways from school into these types of roles in the British Virgin Islands and we often find that the required skill set plus proper certification is lacking. Rather than staff coming from outside the British Virgin Islands to work, we were keen to invest in the local community to upskill team members from our current workforce.

Over the course of 2024 we developed the British Virgin Island Skipper Academy. This is a training program to take individuals from where they are today to a fully qualified and certified skipper. After completing the initial 16-week training in the UK, our team return to the British Virgin Islands and start their practical apprenticeships with our skippers before ‘passing out’ of the academy. As well as learning to be a certificated skipper, they will be trained in how to maintain our yachts and provide exceptional service to our customers whilst they are out on charter. This provides graduates with the skill set and certifications needed to have a stable career within the yacht charter industry for the rest of their working lives.

Our first cohort successfully completed their training and exam in the UK in December 2024, and are back in the British Virgin Islands fine tuning their new skills ready to become independent skippers and start providing charters to our customers.

British Virgin Islands Technical Academy

Advancing Local Talent in Marine Engineering
At our largest base in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), we rely on skilled technical professionals to keep our fleet operating at the highest standards. However, like many specialized maritime roles, there are limited formal pathways for local individuals to gain the necessary certifications and expertise in marine engineering. Rather than sourcing talent from outside the British Virgin Islands, we are committed to investing in our local workforce—providing them with the training and qualifications they need for long-term careers in the yacht charter industry.

In early 2025, we launched the British Virgin Island Technical Academy, an ongoing training program designed to upskill our existing technical staff through structured learning and hands-on experience. Working with a highly skipper professional in this area, we have now developed a comprehensive syllabus of learning that provides training across electrical systems, mechanical maintenance, yacht systems, and resource management, delivered through a combination of face-to-face instruction, supplier-led sessions, and online courses. Upon completion, participants receive a formal certification, equipping them with the expertise to maintain and service our yachts to the highest standards.

By empowering our local technical team with industry-recognized qualifications and cross-training opportunities, the British Virgin Islands Technical Academy ensures a sustainable, skilled workforce that supports both the growth of our business and the prosperity of our community.

To support our destination communities and our staff, we launched a policy to enable yacht usage to a wider group. The policy covers all associated costs with a day sail including a captain, if required.

Our policy has 2 elements:

• Our staff and team building policy would enable our base managers to organize a day out on the water with their team where they can do things like, beach or water clean-ups, conservation activities, skill development, team building, or even a sponsored event. This enables our base teams to take advantage of our 2 additional charity day paid leave days.
• Our local organization and charity policy enabled our base teams to either nominate or donate a day’s charter to a local organization or charity. The organization or charity can either co-ordinate a day themselves to help teach the community or even use it as a prize to support fund-raising activities.

Since we launched this in June 2024, we have seen the British Virgin Islands, Thailand, and the Belize base teams donate yacht usage to the local communities. Read more below:

British Virgin Islands

• BVI provided this usage as a day charter prize to a local cancer charity.
• The proceeds from the “”Walk for a Cure”” event go towards funding organisations supporting cancer.

Thailand

• Thailand donated a day charter as a prize for a Doggy Fashion Show raffle.
• The proceeds from the raffle go towards helping street dogs and cats in Thailand in need. Another amazing cause.

Belize

• Belize donated a day’s charter to the local sailing club, as well as a catamaran to an NPO focusing on reef restoration.
• Fragments of Hope used one of our catamarans to monitor their outplants, monitor nurseries, and conduct bleaching surveys in Turneffe.
• Placencia Sailing Club made use of a yacht as a committee boat for the Belize Sailing Championships. The club encourages children to get out and get sailing and the regatta, which is attended by clubs from Corazol, Belize City and Caye Caulker, is always well supported by visitors and locals alike.

The Travelopia Art Project lands in Cape Town: Rebuilding our community & creating awareness

At The Moorings we have taken the time to understand what is important to our customers, our partners and our people to ensure our approach to sustainability drives positive change in the right areas.

As a part of our local community initiatives, we wanted to support the Cape Town community, where we have a sales and support team office, with an initiative, that would provide mutual benefit and include the local people.

In Cape Town and throughout South Africa there are unfortunately many run-down areas and at-risk communities. Two of our pre-departure team members who are based in Cape Town were particularly interested in how they could work with one of their local communities to make a difference. A small art project caught their eye, this focused on beautifying a building within a township. Art has proven to have an empowering effect in these townships as a painted mural can be uplifting for the residents but also serve as a tourist attraction, generating income and fostering better communication between different groups of people.

Our team were excited to get involved in creating our own mural, something that was both educational and inspiring to the community. We settled on an ocean themed painting as the ocean connects us all and belongs to us all and therefore it is everyone’s responsibility to protect it. Our pre-departure team all contributed ideas that were incorporated in the final design. We worked with an incredible local artist called Ayo, who helped the team convert those ideas and designs into an image that would work on the wall.

We then worked with a local organization who coordinate many art projects of this nature across several townships in Cape Town to select a suitable location. With their help we presented our designs to an individual homeowner to ensure they were involved with the process and happy with the proposed design.

All that was left to do was to paint – with the help of our local artist of course.

In total, we had 10 volunteers from across the Travelopia brands working on the project, which turned into a fun team-building experience, as well as an amazing opportunity to work within the community. We had a team of around 20 local ladies with us across the week and were incredibly proud with the end results. May our ocean mural continue to put a smile on everyone’s face who passes by.

Abaco Beach Clean with Senior Leadership Team

All our staff globally are provided with 2 days of paid leave that they can use for charitable purpose. We celebrate these charity days monthly in our sustainability newsletter that goes out to everyone across the business.

In addition to this, all our customer facing and marketing teams are sent on educational trips on an annual basis. We do our best to ensure that everyone that visits a base from a head office gives back to that destination, where possible individuals will paticipate in a beach or water clean-up or some kind of community based iniaitives.

Our first trip that included such an activity was the senior leadership teams 2024 visit to the Bahamas. Amongst plenty of strategising, debate and ambitious goals set, they also took the time to show their support for the ocean by doing a beach clean in the Abaco. They collected a staggering 20 bags of waste which acts as a reminder to us all to leave only footprints when visiting the beach.

BVI Beach Clean – Crew Values Flotilla

We have recently collaborated with Green VI, a local NGO in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) focused on waste management and recycling.

Green VI works to address plastic and glass waste while also educating children and their families about the importance of recycling. The organization has set up recycling points throughout the BVI, which are regularly collected and taken to recycling centres.

As part of the collaboration, the Crew Values Flotilla Team participated in a beach clean-up event with a local school on Jost Van Dyke. The team worked alongside the students to clean up the shoreline, collecting a significant amount of waste, which was then separated into categories such as aluminium cans, glass, and plastic.

Belize community initiatives

Fragments of Hope

Belize is home to the second largest reef in the world, keen divers and snorkellers flock here annually to enjoy the incredible marine life and corals that occupy the reefs. Fragments of Hope are an NGO based in the Placencia Peninsular, Belize, that focuses on the protection, restoration and regeneration of the reefs incredible corals.

Fragments of Hope take the smallest scraps of coral and regrow these within their nurseries, once the coral is established, they are replanted in the ocean to help damaged reefs. Healthy corals will attract marine life and support the increase in fish populations which are all key components for a thriving reef.

Over the last 8 years we have been supporting this fantastic organization, providing them with access to our yachts to conduct research, to replant corals as needed and to simply observe the corals at night. August is what is known as spawning season and is crucial to ensure the creation of new coral, the team will often take a yacht and conduct night dives to observe this.

In recent years stony coral tissue disease has started to impact the reefs in Belize therefore the education of anyone visiting the reefs has become vital. This is a water born disease that spreads through contact therefore it is essential that guests understand what to look out for and take the correct precautions to ensure this doesn’t spread. All our advice is shared with our customers upon arrival at our Belize base through the educational literature provided by Fragments of Hope.

Placencia Sailing Club

Established in 2012, the Placencia Sailing Club works with the youth within their local communities to engage them in sailing, providing the training to allow individuals to develop the skills required to be a sailor.

When Placencia Sailing Club was first established we donated an Optimist dinghy to the organization and have been supporting them ever since. Annually we provide them with a committee yacht for officials during their competitions and have supporting them in delivering equipment to other parts of Belize. We have helped fundraise to purchase new equipment for the club including a Lazer dinghy. This is vital in ensuring children continue to be able to sail as they grow. Both the Optimist and Lazer dinghies the club use are Olympic boats therefore this training provides children with multiple options for adulthood in a country with limited opportunities. Many of the children who start sailing with Placencia aspire to become skippers of larger yachts like ours.

Poor and Famous

Unfortunately, some areas of Belize have challenges with crime, gangs and violence therefore it is essentially that children have initiatives that will take them away from the city and engage them in different activities. An organization that is based in Belize City is Poor and Famous, that focus on engaging young boys in playing football.

We are a supporter of the initiative and donate regularly to ensure the organization have the equipment and uniforms they need to be able to train and play in competitions.

Greece community initiatives

Ionian Dolphin Project  

Since 1991, the Ionian Dolphin Project aims to ensure the long-term viability of marine mammals living in coastal waters of the eastern Ionian Sea. Dolphins and Mediterranean monk seals inhabiting the coastal waters of Greece are facing significant threats. Some of them must deal with increasing human encroachment, while others have disappeared altogether from portions of their former range.

The coastal waters of Greece still harbour a remarkable diversity of marine mammal fauna compared to other parts of the Mediterranean. Yet, such richness is decreasing due to the degradation of the marine environment and other human-driven impacts.

The Ionian Dolphin Project conduct research and conservation activities aimed at identifying measures to slow down, halt, or reverse such trends.

At Sunsail, we support them by various means, such as providing yachts for their research, reporting sightings, and educating our customers. In addition, we are working alongside this organisation, and the WWF to declare certain islands in the region marine protected areas.  

Learn more about the Ionian Dolphin Project here. 

Kosamare  
  

The Kefalonia Organisation for the Study and Awareness of the Marine Environment (Kosamare) was established as a social cooperative enterprise in 2018. They are a team of professional divers and biologists with a range of technical skills and experience and therefore have a unique ability to access and study the undersea environment.

Their mission is to study, raise awareness, and protect the local marine ecosystem and endangered marine species. Some of their aims below:

Carry out research and conservation projects related to the local marine environment, endangered and invasive species.
Engage and inform the public by working with tourists, the population and local schools.
Provide technical and logistical support to institutions working in the study and protection of marine species in the area.
Their flagship project is the monitoring of the Mediterranean monk seal, a programme that allows a study of the local subpopulation. They intend this data to inform protective measures such as marine reserves that are supported through community engagement and run several programmes in collaboration with local, national, and international organisations.
Kosamare offers educational talks to our Sunsail flotilla guests to increase awareness of initiatives and ways our customers can support them.

Learn more Kosamare here. 

Greek Tourism Board 

Sunsail remains in discussion with the Greek Tourism Board around sustainability initiatives and how to move forward in this space via the use of government grants.

As one of the initial steps, Sunsail is proud to have attended as a panellist for a showcase on ‘Sustainable Sailing in Greece’ held in December, 2023. The Greek National Tourism Organisation hosted a discussion with sailing companies to look at the increasing efforts to ensure the protection of the marine environment. The Sustainable Sailing in Greece initiative is powered by the Ioanian Environmental Foundation.

We are proud to already have various initiatives in place through Our OCEAN Promise, and we look forward to building on these, as well as supporting what we can achieve as a collective in Greece, by continuing to focus on current and future efforts to make sailing in the amazing waters of Greece more sustainable.

Learn more on Sustainable Sailing in Greece here. 

Sustainable Sailing Greece

We’re proud to partner with Sustainable Sailing Greece, a collaborative initiative uniting sailors, charter companies, and marine professionals to protect Greece’s stunning coastline and seas.

They provide practical resources, share expert knowledge, and create a platform for open discussion around the environmental challenges facing our marine and coastal areas — all with the goal of finding real, impactful solutions.

How to Anchor Safely Around Seagrass

Sustainable sailing Greece offers advisce to sailors in Greece such as How To Anchor Safely Around Seagrass. Enjoy the video and enjoy the summary below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktopu0026amp;v=S6bdUestHwk

Anchoring may seem simple, but it has a big impact beneath the surface. In our featured video, RYA skipper Tristan demonstrates how to anchor safely without damaging delicate Posidonia seagrass meadows, vital marine ecosystems found throughout the Mediterranean.

You’ll learn how to identify seagrass beds, choose safer anchoring spots like sand or mud, and use long lines responsibly. With tips like wearing polarized sunglasses to spot seagrass and how to avoid anchor drag, this video is a must-watch for any sailor looking to reduce their environmental footprint and protect the places we love to explore.