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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Agoda joins forces with WWF to plant 6,000 trees in Chiang Mai

More than 50 Agoda employees, including CEO John Brown worked alongside the local Chiang Mai community to kick-start the planting of 6,000 trees as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility sustainability initiative in collaboration with World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Thailand.

In this, the first venture with WWF, Agoda pledged to plant trees on behalf of its 2019 Gold Circle Award winning hotel partners in Thailand and China, and on Friday 14 August 2020 Agodans, some of its hotel partners, alongside local community volunteers, students from the School of Forest Industry Organisation No 13 pitched in to get planting some of the 6,000 trees. The teams prepared the fertilisers and planted seedlings, as part of the WWF effort, which also incentivises ten farming families that manage this land to shift from mono-agriculture farming to Three Forests Four Benefits way of managing the land to help restore the environment and stop topsoil destruction.

“Through the multi-stakeholder setting of this forest reforestation project FLR349, WWF is grateful to work with Agoda, who holds great potential to mitigate climate impact and improve the livelihoods of those living in the local community. We share the same vision to return forests in headwater areas back to abundant levels, build sustainable careers for farmers, restore the local food system, and promote sustainable tourism,” said Ply Pirom, project manager for sustainable consumption and production of WWF-Thailand.

“We are proud to be part of this project and to work with WWF, which directly benefits smallholder farmers, and on a larger scale, the wider rural community and ecosystem. At Agoda, we are passionately committed to giving back to the community in a meaningful way, whether that’s helping small business owners throughout Thailand to connect with, and benefit from the economic and social benefits of tourism in a sustainable way or supporting local community initiatives such as this one, which we can provide both a financial contribution but also ensure we volunteer our time and efforts too.”

As Agoda is working on expanding its Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives this year. Giving back is an important element of Agoda culture, employees can take volunteer paid time off, to participate in causes close to their heart. In order to further instil volunteering as a part of Agoda DNA, the sustainability teams at Agoda have launched tools like Kiva – a microlending platform as well as Benevity to Agoda employees in all its 30 country offices,’’ said

Tuan Pham, head of sustainability and CSR at Agoda, said the project is part of WWF’s Forest Landscape Restoration Fund 349 (FLR 349), following King Rama XI of Thailand’s principles of Three Forests Four Benefits. Its mission is to restore ecosystem, create sustainable food system to help farmers to escape the debt cycle arisen from monoculture and at the same time conserve the soil, watersheds, and natural forest. Reforestation has tremendous ecological and environmental value. It also helps to restore clean air as well as reduce floods. Chiang Mai is known to be prone to flooding.

From its beginnings as an e-commerce start-up in 2005, digital travel platform Agoda has grown to offer a global network of over 2.8 million properties in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide, offering travellers easy access to a wide choice of luxury and budget hotels, apartments, homes and villas, to suit all budgets and travel occasions. In 2019, Agoda added a flight product and packages to help make travel even easier.

Headquartered in Singapore, Agoda is part of Booking Holdings (Nasdaq: BKNG) and employs more than 4,000 staff in 30 countries. Agoda.com and the Agoda mobile app are available in 39 languages.

Left to right: 1. Apiwat Khonjaiboon (Director of the School of Forest Industry Organisation No 13), 2. Tuan Pham (Head of Sustainability and CSR, Agoda), 3. Sriwan Prapatsornwattanakul (Chief Executive of the Kong Khaek Sub District Administration Organisation), 4. Ply Pirom (Project Manager, WWF Thailand), 5. Yingyong Vityananan (Head of Sustainable Market and Partnership, WWF Thailand), 6. John Brown (CEO, Agoda), 7. Rattapat Srichanklad (FLR349 Fund Secretary), 8. Mrs Wattana Khrangsee (Director of the Mae Chaem Cooperative Land Settlement Office), 9. Preecha Kannika (Deputy Chief Executive of the Kong Khaek Sub District Administration Organization), 10. Ms Kevalin Athayu (Manager of Sustainability & Global Affairs, Agoda).

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