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Ziptrek Ecotours:
Helping leaders lead
Ziptrek Ecotours is a well-established sustainability leader in New Zealand’s tourism industry. The Queenstown-based company and its leader, Trent Yeo, wanted to understand how to close the last remaining gaps to achieve truly sustainable performance in a measurable way.
Helping leaders lead
Ziptrek was Queenstown’s first carbon neutral business; has a strong history in leading meaningful restorative conservation projects, including the planting of over 5000 shrubs in partnership with Wakatipu Reforestation Trust; and is passionate about sharing its sustainability knowledge with its customers and the local community. Sustainability is in Ziptrek’s DNA and reflected in its tour packages, zipline design and all business decisions.
The Future-Fit Business Benchmark was a natural fit for Ziptrek, drawing on the Natural Step principles and reflecting Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics and the Stockholm Resilience Centre’s Planetary Boundaries. The Benchmark is a series of 23 Break-Even Goals that measure the true progress of a business towards a society that is socially just, environmentally restorative and economically inclusive.
In the words of Ziptrek CEO, Trent Yeo:
"I was excited when I found out about Future-Fit Business. We’d heard about many different systems for assessing sustainability, but none of them was completely the right fit. We were keen on how it’s not only for big businesses, but smaller businesses can use it too. It was important to us that it’s open source, and it was a robust structure that businesses can work through - there's no holes in it. A key aspect for us is that it references the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals in a way that smaller businesses can apply them. The global aspect is also important - if countries, industries and businesses all create our own systems, we can’t compare."
Our solution: coaching not consulting
Proxima, as a Future-Fit Business Benchmark accredited partner, worked collaboratively with Ziptrek to coach it through its baseline Future-Fit assessment, enabling the Ziptrek team to do most of the work (and learning).
Proxima assumed a coaching-style role to guide the internal team through its baseline Future-Fit assessment. The project began with introducing the Benchmark to the Ziptrek Future-Fit team and carrying out an initial Health Check against each of the 23 Break-Even Goals. This gave the team a snapshot of its position against the Goals so that it could prioritise future sustainability initiatives.
A majority of the baseline Future-Fit assessment was internally driven by the highly capable Ziptrek team. Proxima supported that with regular check-ins to answer questions, provided technical expertise and supported data collection for measuring those Break-Even Goals where data had not previously been recorded.
Get in touch to find out more about how the Future-Fit Business Benchmark can help you lead the way.