Modern Slavery Statement

This statement is made in support of the Modern Slavery Act

This statement is made pursuant to Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and constitutes Kuoni UK’s slavery and human trafficking statement for the financial year ending 31 December 2024.

About Our Organisation

Kuoni UK is a tour operator and one of seven specialists operating independently within the DERTOUR Group. The DERTOUR Group supply chains are Accommodation Providers, Transport and Travel Operators, Destination Services Providers, Cleaning and Maintenance Contractors, Technology and Software Providers, Uniform and Merchandise Suppliers.

For over 50 years, Kuoni UK have designed tailor-made holidays around the world and have firmly established a reputation as the country's leading long-haul tour operator. We work with numerous suppliers including leading hotels, destination management companies, vehicle rental companies and airlines. Kuoni UK is committed to act with integrity in all our business dealings, to be a responsible business that treats all people with dignity and respect. At Kuoni UK we strive to have a sustainable social and environmental impact at home and the regions we operate. It is central to our Responsible Business Strategy that we adopt and actively encourage sustainable practices and promote responsible tourism.

We recognise the responsibility we share with our suppliers to operate ethically. Promoting decent working conditions in our supply chains is part of our strategy to act in a socially responsible manner.

Kuoni UK has set up formal structures and procedures to ensure that there is as limited risk of human rights and modern slavery breaches as possible and that if any do occur, there is a process in place in which to deal with and eliminate the risk. This also ensures that we can review how risks occur and restructure our procedures to minimise the risk occurring again. We ensure all our suppliers comply with our Supplier Code of Conduct which highlights our zero-tolerance stance on human rights, modern slavery and violating the protection of children.

Definition

Modern Slavery is a broad term used to encompass the offences of slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory labour and human trafficking. The term extends to slavery-like practices such as debt bondage, sale or exploitation of children and forced or servile marriage. While varied in nature, all involved one person depriving another of their liberty to exploit them for personal or commercial gain.

We are committed to ensuring that we are not engaged or complicit in the exploitation of people and to play our part in helping to eradicate Modern Slavery.

Transparency

Kuoni UK has had no cases of modern slavery risks reported to us in 2024 so have not had to act in response to said risks.

To demonstrate our progress and commitment to tackling Modern Slavery within the travel and tourism industry, you can see our previous statements in our policies section on our website.

Policies and Procedures

In our activities as a tour operator, we work for and with people: customers, staff, local representatives and the local populations in the destinations we operate in. We do not tolerate any form of slavery or human trafficking in our operations and supply chain and outlined below is our commitment to ensuring they have no place in our business. With the aim of preventing violations, minimising them and taking remedial action, we ask all our service providers to comply with the requirements and obligations of the DERTOUR SCoC. This states that there should be no form of forced labour or violation of basic human rights, that they provide a safe and hygienic working environment, wages must meet or exceed legal minimum and/or industry standards with no illegal or unauthorised deductions from wages, working hours of employees much be in line with legal and/or industry requirements and that they do not allow or tolerate any child prostitution at premises and facilities.

Kuoni UK works closely with its hotels and accommodation partners and ground agent partners to make them aware of the code and encourages them to do their utmost to ensure compliance with anti-slavery and human trafficking measures.

The senior management team at Kuoni UK will not hesitate to act if any supplier is in breach of the code of conduct, which will include removing hotels/villas/tours/attractions etc from sale and/or reporting them to the relevant authorities. Our working practices respect and uphold human rights for our employees, suppliers and business partners. Kuoni UK provides all staff with ethical behaviour guidelines for all within the DERTOUR UK Group. We expect all staff to maintain high standards in accordance with the set ethical values and to report any wrongdoing that falls short of these fundamental principles via a dedicated digital compliance system.

We are committed to providing training via The Code to all our employees. This ensures that all our staff are suitably trained on the prevention of modern slavery and trafficking and are equipped with the necessary information and understanding on how to prevent and eliminate the sexual exploitation of children in travel and tourism. We will continue to report on our engagement on this in our future annual statements. This aligns with our internal KPIs to measure the effectiveness of these steps along with training our current employees on CSR policies and encouraging this training within the onboarding process for new employees. This helps to demonstrate how this statement supports our SCoC and that as members of the travel and tourism industry, we are active in ensuring that it is a safe place for everyone to work.

Our on-going commitments to ensuring that all human rights are protected within our supply chains are include internal training and ensuring our whistleblowing sites and supplier code of conducts are up to date and accessible. We will assess the success of these commitments within our next annual statement.

Managing Director Mark Duguid on behalf of Kuoni UK – 25/03/2025