Hebrides Cruises, the leading provider of luxury small wildlife cruises on Scotland’s West Coast, is proud to announce that it has retained its Green Tourism Gold Award status for the third consecutive year.

This accreditation highlights the cruise company’s unwavering passion for protecting the environment, reducing its carbon footprint and encouraging its guests to actively support its sustainability initiatives.

The Green Tourism Awards are globally acknowledged as a benchmark for environmentally friendly best practices. The awards evaluate organisations across more than 70 indicators and 15 sustainability goals, including carbon reduction, waste management, biodiversity, local produce, ethical purchasing and equality.

Hebrides Cruises’ continued excellence is reflected across all three overarching pillars which each organisation is assessed on – People, Places and Planet.

The company’s evaluation highlights this year include retention of its 100% grading for Health and Wellbeing of its team and guests.  Communication received a 93% rating, underlining a dedication to sharing its green commitment with guests.

Hebrides Cruises achieved a 98% rating under the Destination criteria and received praise for the work it does to protect the Hebrides in providing information to guests on how they can reduce the impact of their visit and respect the cultural heritage of the destination. 

The company’s passion for provenance was also recognised, with Hebrides Cruises receiving a 94% score in the ‘Food and Drink’ criteria for its commitment to prioritising local and sustainable suppliers.  Importantly, Hebrides Cruises received a 90% rating for its energy conservation and reduction methods.

Andrea Nicholas, CEO Green Tourism said:
“Hebrides Cruises has done a fantastic job in retaining their Gold Green Tourism award and improving their overall score.  The team has done an excellent job in maintaining and improving their efforts towards sustainable tourism and engaging guests in the company’s green commitment. Notably, Hebrides Cruises has seen an increase in scoring for the Water goal, the result of initiatives to recover and reuse water where possible alongside efforts to conserve and reduce where possible.”

Hebrides Cruises’ Founder Rob Barlow commented:
“Our passion for sustainable cruising is at the heart of everything we do, so I’m immensely proud to retain the Green Tourism Gold Award at very high pass rates in all categories again for the third year running.” 

“Hebrides Cruises has introduced new green initiatives over the past year which have ensured that we’ve been able to maintain the highest ratings of all aspects relating to our sustainability, with improvements in key areas such as energy, waste, water and carbon reduction.”

“We also encourage our guests to actively participate in our environmental protection efforts and have introduced a charter for responsible and sustainable tourism, outlining how they can support the environment while visiting the area.”

“The team is continuously looking for new and innovative ways to improve and maintain our green credentials and will be introducing new sustainability initiatives over the coming months such as installing lithium batteries with a Bluetooth monitoring system which will monitor each battery and its capacity levels.  This will allow us to set up the best charging mode, therefore having the most efficient output aboard.  We also plan to instal a water maker on Elizabeth G and a new A+ energy rated oven aboard Emma Jane and we’re consulting with our Green Initiative Crew member, Lynsey for her annual checklist on anything she feels could be improved.”