Click A Tree’s smart reforestation projects target all 17 Sustainable Development Goals
Founder and CEO Chris Kaiser explains how Click A Tree can drive sales and boost client loyalty in an exclusive interview with ITB Berlin News
ITB Berlin News is partnering with Click A Tree to plant an additional 1,000 trees as part of our plans to become carbon neutral by 2025.
Click A Tree has partnered with a wide range of leading travel companies including Best Western as well as many SMEs, hotels, tour operators, restaurants and many other industries, to plant trees. Companies simply choose a way they want to plant trees. For example, for a product sold or a service provided and let Click A Tree do the rest.
How did you come up with the idea of Click A Tree?
From 2012 to 2017, I had the privilege of living in Thailand and working in very close contact with elephants. Their biggest challenge is the loss of habitat due to deforestation. Hence I decided I should start planting trees, to ensure that my grandchildren can one day still observe real elephants out in the wild.
Having studied and worked in tourism for more than 15 years, growing forests in cooperation with tourism companies such as tour operators, hotels or travel agents was the most efficient way to get traction fast. And I love efficiency.
How does Click A Tree contribute to the sustainable development goals (SDGs)?
Elephants don’t live in monoculture tree plantations, they live in highly diverse forests. So from the beginning it was clear to me that with Click A Tree we’ll create super diverse ecosystems.
As we grew, our costs per tree decreased. Yet, instead of lowering our sales prices, we took the additional money and started funding side projects, such as building an entrepreneurship school in Ghana or collecting ocean plastic in the Philippines. That ensures we’re generating maximum impact. That’s what we call “holistic sustainability”.
Can you run us through the implementation process?
Business owners are busy running their businesses. Hence we made our implementation process as simple as it gets. You sign up for your Universal Impact Account on www.clickatree.com. That takes about 37 seconds, no credit card needed. And that’s it. Then you’re ready to make an impact.
Of course, we’re happy to hop on an onboarding call with you to ensure we’ll maximise the benefit for each side. Because only if every party involved profits is a cooperation holistically sustainable. And only then does it work well in the long-term.
It’s incredibly simple to set up, yet yields massive benefits for all parties involved.
How does Click A Tree add value to its clients’ travel and tourism offering?
In multiple ways. We create first-class marketing material for our partners. We offer hi-res images, pre-written blog articles, PR texts and social media posts as well as regular marketing inspiration and best practices from other partners, to ensure everyone benefits to the maximum.
Our regular in-depth reports help our partners to know exactly what happens in the respective reforestation projects, and they help foster client loyalty. We provide them with pictures and impact stats so they can see how fast their tree has grown. We also include our latest offers and encourage them to plant a ‘little sibling’ for their tree.
This is highly valuable, since it offers a very positive entrance into a sales call.
Purpose-driven sustainable engagement not only helps to attract new clients and increase client loyalty, it also improves employer branding. Modern humans want to have purpose in what they are doing. And working for a globally engaged company gives them exactly that – The feeling of contributing to something much larger than just their own paycheck.
Why is it important for the travel and tourism industry to meet face to face at ITB Berlin?
I love it for three main reasons. It’s a lot more productive to brainstorm in person than via video. In real life ideas flow much better. Secondly, we’re social creatures. We need the company of other people. So much so, that with Click A Tree we’re now opening our first brick and mortar office in Heidelberg. Thirdly, it enables chance meetings. There are so many people you meet by chance, while grabbing a beer or waiting for your appointment to show up, and all these people you would never meet online.
