We want to have a
Learning and development
We are very focused on leadership and management development, and have recently launched our new programme Leading and Managing with Purpose (LaMP). We want everyone to have lightbulb learning moments on a regular basis where they gain news skills during their time with Explore.
Every Explore employee is entitled to a ‘BTY’ training trip every year or two (depending on their role), joining a small group of customers on one of our tours. As we return from our travels, we all give a presentation to the whole business, so we’re all continually learning about our trips.
Be part of something bigger
The Hotelplan UK family of brands includes four well-established specialist tour operators: Explore Worldwide, Inghams, Santa's Lapland and Inntravel. We have a strong tradition of excellence and high stands of quality and service - we're all extremely passionate about the holidays we offer, and strive to always meet and exceed our customers' expectations.
As part of Hotelplan UK, Explore benefits from the comradery and expertise of its sister companies. Marketing teams from across the UK brands have annual Away Days and brainstorms, while sales teams have been known to help each other out during peak periods. We share our office HQ with sister brands Inghams and Santa's Lapland, making it easy to come together for brainstorms or cross-brand project meetings, for yoga classes or social coffee breaks.
Annual get-togethers and organised fun challenges like Steps for Sanity regularly bring people together from across the brands, while our subsidised holidays staff benefit enables us to enjoy discounted holidays from across the brands.
We really are one big happy family, and we're better, together.
Protecting our futures
Explore has had sustainable travel in its DNA since its conception in 1981. But since being a founding signatory in 2020, we have stepped up our sustainability strategy, setting ourselves strong targets and holding ourselves accountable. We have one of the best Climate Action Plans in the business, and a comprehensive carbon strategy. As a global tour operator, we acknowledge our impact on the environment and do all we can to minimise and mitigate that impact, while also having a positive impact on the destinations and the communities we visit.
Having measured the carbon footprint of every single one of our tours and all our business operations in 2022, we’ve been busy reducing our emissions. We’ve just announced that we achieved 7.2% reduction in our intensity footprint in Year One against our target of 7%. Changes we’ve made include replacing domestic flights with rail journeys or ferry, cancelling some trips where we couldn’t reduce or justify the higher carbon emissions, and designing new ones that use lower carbon and public transport options. We’re big believers that slower, sustainable travel is not only better for the environment, but it’s often a more enjoyable and authentic travel experience too.
Explore has moved away from avoidance-based carbon offsets and towards investing in carbon removal technologies. While reducing our emissions remains our priority, by supporting Klimate to remove carbon from the atmosphere, we’re lessening the residual carbon as well as the impact of previous emissions. We’ve worked with Cool Earth for ten years, and have donated more than £150,000 to support projects in the Peruvian Amazon, £40,000 of which was donated last year.
In 2023, we achieved our long-time aspiration of establishing a charity, and the Explore Foundation was born. A registered charity, the Explore Foundation identifies and supports projects that target poverty, increase access to education, and promote conservation.
It’s all very well us having these goals, but it’s really important to us that we’re held accountable – we’re B Corp Certified and have been verified by ethy, the sustainability accreditation specialist.
Our goals and targets remain ambitious, and we have pledged to always communicate our progress - our successes and misses - with our customers and stakeholders. Most importantly, we promise to always strive to be that little bit better than yesterday, every day. You can read more about Explore's sustainability strategy, our goals and our progress towards those goals, in our 2024 Purpose Paper.
What do we offer when you work for us?
We recognise and celebrate that every employee is an individual. Our commitment to a diverse and inclusive workplace is reflected in the range of benefits we offer, with some of the key highlights being:
- Enjoy 50% discount on holidays across all our brands for you and your family or friends
- Additional annual leave when you choose to swap a plane for a train
- Career pathing and continuous development opportunities
- Opportunity to take a workation for up to 6 weeks per year and work from anywhere in the world
- 2 volunteer days each year to give back to what is important to you
- A well-being resource hub and on site classes; yoga, boxercise, annual Steps challenge, employee assistance programmes, cash back health and dental plan
- Hybrid and home based roles
- Enhanced family leave allowances
We regularly review and update our benefits to make sure we're really competitive with what we offer to our people for all the amazing work they do!