​ACCESSIBILITY STATEMENT
H&T Argentina
Safety Management System
Safe Adventures With H&T
1. Introduction to Safe Adventures With H&T
As a Destination Management Company in Argentina, we recognise that there is a need to ensure the safety of those who travel with us on our tour programmes and our duty to provide our tour operator/travel agent partners with peace of mind. Hence the introduction of our Safe Adventures With H&T programme.
Most people will recognise and acknowledge that the standards of safety they enjoy at home may be different to those they find overseas. Nevertheless, they expect that they will be reasonably safe and, in an environment, appropriate to the travel programme they are on, and that we have taken reasonable steps to ensure we have considered their safety. Where there may be a lack of regulatory enforcement, there are several practical actions that can be taken to educate suppliers and to promote good safety practice.
Our Safe Adventures With H&T programme is concerned with these practical measures for raising the standard of safety and is about the consolidation and formalisation of the investment already made by us in relation to safety issues. Most importantly, Safe Adventures With H&T is about raising the profile of safety with supplier management so that real change can be achieved, and any risks minimised.
There are many good business reasons for the implementation of the Safe Adventures With H&T initiative. First and foremost, as stated within our Health & Safety Policy Statement, we believe that we have a moral and legal responsibility to our clients and their customers to ensure we minimise any risks wherever practically possible, it is our stated aim to ensure everyone has a safe and enjoyable stay with us.
In addition, we strongly believe that the long-term commercial prosperity of our own organisation is closely linked to increasing confidence in all aspects of the integrity of our product, including safety.
The Safe Adventures With H&T Programme
We took the decision that despite local and national regulations, there remains a risk to customers if a supplier does not carry out his responsibilities, often due to the lack of any regulatory support and enforcement, or management failure. So, what could we do about this? The decision was that there is always more that can be done and that a major factor with safety management is ensuring that all parties have safety high on their agenda; this is the aim:
The Safe Adventures With H&T programme is about the consolidation and formalisation of the investment already made by us in relation to safety issues. Most importantly it’s about raising the profile of safety with supplier management so that real change can be achieved.
2. Our Health & Safety Policy – Safe Adventures With H&T. – Roger Frost, Co-Owner
We recognise our responsibilities to our clients for their customer health & safety and it is an important issue for us. It is clearly our responsibility to contract with reputable suppliers and to take steps to provide services, which meet a reasonable standard of safety having regard to our countries legal norm. Consequently, as a business we are responsible for setting the company’s health and safety policy and as Co-owner, I am responsible for ensuring the policy is implemented.
However, establishing and promoting a safety culture is a collective responsibility and it is therefore the responsibility of the entire team within the business to take the lead and demonstrate commitment to the continual improvement of safety.
We will ensure that reasonable and appropriate resources, both financial and human, will be provided together with training and information so that everyone can fulfil their responsibilities as detailed in our Safe Adventures With H&T programme.
As a business we can advise our suppliers about health and safety good practice standards if required and we can work together with them to maintain and improve safety standards where necessary. As an absolute minimum we will ensure they meet all local and national safety regulations.
We shall also make our clients and their customers aware of their responsibilities in terms of their own safety whilst travelling with us by providing appropriate safety information suitable for the type of travel programme they are on.
We will monitor our suppliers via a process of self-assessment and some physical inspections and improve our safety performance wherever possible, ensuring any action is taken where necessary with suppliers to maintain or improve safety standards and minimise risk.
In summary, the health, safety, and well-being of all our clients’ customers whilst they are participating on one of our vacation programmes, is of paramount importance and we will endeavour to take all reasonable and practicable steps to ensure a safe, secure and healthy environment for them.
3. What we do with suppliers.
Conducting Health & Safety risk assessments on suppliers is our way of ensuring our suppliers put safety as a number one priority. We have a programme of supplier risk assessments in place, either via self-assessment or via some physical assessments carried out by our own staff. This negates the need for the tour operator or travel agent to carry out their own assessments as the work has already been done, so you can book with the confidence that safety has been taken into consideration already
We conduct these checks on all of our accommodation, transport and high-risk activities (Abseiling to Zip Lining etc.). We do not carry out safety checks on relatively low risk activities such as Walking Tours, Museum visits, Cookery classes or any national or iconic attraction, as these are generally well managed by the local and national authorities with many thousands of visitors using them every day. They also do not usually allow individual organisations to carry out any form of safety check due to the volume of different companies/nationalities they deal with.
4. Accommodation Suppliers:
We work with UK safety consultancy Sanderson Phillips who conduct safety assessments on the accommodation suppliers we use. The supplier completes the assessment online and Sanderson Phillips risk assesses and grades the result in their online portal.
Suppliers are graded as follows:
We can provide the grade of any accommodation supplier contracted with us or have an assessment completed for it if we do not already have it. Our aim is to only work with Green, Yellow & Orange suppliers.
5. Transport Suppliers:
We issue out transport safety self-assessments via our UK safety consultants tranquilico.com and we grade the suppliers based on their responses as follows:
Green – generally meeting good practice
Yellow – acceptable – but may have some action to take to achieve green status
Red – below acceptable good practice and not in our programme unless action taken to achieve yellow or green status.
We can provide the grade of any transport supplier contracted with us or have an assessment completed for it if we do not already have one. Our assessment programme is based on risk/volume
6. Activity Suppliers:
We issue out activity safety self-assessments via our safety consultants tranquilico.com relevant to the activity contracted and we grade the suppliers based on their responses as follows:
Green – generally meeting good practice
Yellow – acceptable – but may have some action to take to achieve green status
Red – below acceptable good practice and not in our programme unless action taken to achieve yellow or green status.
We can provide the grade of any activity supplier contracted with us or have an assessment completed for it if we do not already have one. Our assessment programme is based on risk/volume
7. Assessment Frequency:
If a supplier is GREEN – they are re-assessed every 3 years
If a supplier is YELLOW or ORANGE – they will be reassessed after 1 year (if they have not responded to the defect letter)
If a supplier is RED – they are re-graded only on receipt of a completed defect letter outlining what steps they have taken to improve safety.
8. Customer Safety Information
We believe it is the responsibility of the Tour Operator or Travel Agent to provide as much pre-travel safety information as possible, so their customers are aware of any risk in the destination they are travelling to. This can be via directing them to their National Governments Travel Advice or numerous websites relating to travel health & safety. They can also provide them with safety information via brochures, websites, and any pre-travel information. For our part, we can provide safety information to guests on arrival, either via a leaflet, notices, or verbal communication if a customer wishes. This is an important area of due diligence as we are both reinforcing the message that the customers themselves need to ‘think safe’ whilst travelling.
We also promote the provision of safety briefings to our third-party suppliers so that drivers or guides give a safety briefing to customers prior to departure in any transportation. Also, that our accommodation suppliers bring to their attention the fire safety procedures and notices provided in their rooms and finally that any activity supplier provides an appropriate safety briefing and any relevant safety equipment needed before the activity commences.
9. Incident Reporting & Due Diligence
We believe in ensuring our travel agent and tour operator partners are advised immediately of any health & safety incident we are made aware of that involves their customers. We have a comprehensive incident reporting and due diligence system, which ensures we pass on all the relevant information, and we gather as much information about the incident to advise our partners and their insurers.We also take up the issue of feedback to the supplier to ensure the cause of the incident is rectified to prevent any recurrence, always minimising the risk for future customers.
10. Crisis Management Plan – Safe Adventures With H&T
It is crucial in business today to have the ability to handle the component of leading a business. Therefore, it is given priority by us to ensure that we are prepared and trained to deal with whatever situation comes along.
We have a Crisis Management Plan in place with defined roles and responsibilities in the event of any serious incident occurring involving any of our customers.
We invest money and management time developing and maintaining our reputation for delivering excellent travel programmes and building up our brand image. We would not wish to see this damaged if we were seen to mismanage any incident involving our client’s customers.
We very much believe that a company which is seen to cope well in a crisis is a company people will feel they can trust
First class customer service is a given and maintaining normal business operations whilst also diverting resources to deal with any issue are key to our success. Our key objectives would be to:
Ensure that steps were taken to prevent the incident in the first place
• Safeguard the lives and well-being of our clients’ customers and our own staff
• Ensure everything possible is done for anyone involved
• Communicate effectively with our travel partners, any victims, relatives, suppliers, and the press
• Provide appropriate human and financial assistance in conjunction with the travel partner involved
The safety of our client’s customers is of primary importance to us, and our reputation very much relies on this. So, you can book with us, confident that we have planned and prepared for any unforeseen circumstance.
We provide all our partners and their customers with 24/7 emergency contact details. We are there to support our clients’ customers from the smallest of worries to major emergencies, nothing is too trivial a crisis whatever its nature is an important