DER Travel and Tourism is increasingly committed to protecting children in tourism. A Group-wide child protection policy was therefore adopted for the first time on 20 November 2022, International Children's Rights Day. This applies to all business units. This includes tour operators, incoming agencies, our own hotels and travel agencies.
"We have been committed to better protection of children from abuse in tourism for many years in several industry initiatives and as part of the Child Protection Code for Travel and Tourism Companies (The Code)," says Sören Hartmann, CEO of DER Travel and Tourism Group. "Until now, our focus has been on the prevention of sexual exploitation - the new child protection policy goes far beyond this," says Hartmann.
The new child protection policy was preceded by a risk analysis of Travel and Tourism offers and an assessment of how these affect the protection of children's rights. This includes, for example, visits to schools and orphanages when travelling. "Such programmes are often set up with the best of intentions and are also intended to generate donations. But in the end, they do more harm to the children than good," concludes Laura Steden, Director Corporate Responsibility at DER Travel and Tourism Group. School visits disrupt protected places of learning, create financial dependencies and disregard children's personal rights.
With its child protection guidelines, DER Travel and Tourism Group provides its global units with clearly defined processes and requirements. These include requirements for products, assistance in communicating children's rights and child protection, measures for training and raising awareness among employees of tour operators, travel agencies, hotels, incoming agencies, tour guides and partners, and for educating customers.
The existing reporting mechanisms will also be expanded as part of the new child protection guidelines. To date, the focus has been on the reporting platform www.nicht-wegsehen.net, which can be used to report suspected cases and indications of sexual exploitation of children. Internal reporting and escalation mechanisms will also be introduced in order to uncover abuses at an early stage and offer support to those affected.
Measures in the child protection guideline include
- In future, visits to schools and orphanages will be classified as inadmissible and replaced in all DER Travel and Tourism Group travel programmes by programme items that are compatible with the Child Protection Policy.
- Strict requirements will be imposed on visits to projects and homestay offers where travellers stay with locals. Providers of project visits and homestays are trained and sensitised on the subject of children's rights and child protection. They must commit to a zero-tolerance approach to the sexual exploitation of children. Furthermore, wherever children are involved, the two-adult principle applies, according to which children must never be left alone with unfamiliar adults. DER Travel and Tourism Group consciously promotes visits to projects and accommodation in homestays, as this is a way of integrating communities into the tourism value chain in a meaningful way while at the same time meeting strict requirements for the protection of children's legal rights.
- In future, there will no longer be any volunteering programmes. The reason for this is that it cannot be guaranteed that no children will be involved in these programmes.
- Information to sensitise stakeholders, such as partners and guests, will be expanded, for example to include tips on how to deal with begging children and children as street vendors.
"The prevention of the sexual exploitation of children will remain a focal point for us. However, it is important to us that we also raise awareness of other forms of child exploitation in tourism. We have set an important course with our child protection guidelines. We will continue to refine the measures and, above all, continuously monitor them," says Laura Steden.
