“Until now, people have been put off doing it by the time it takes to get to your destination, but if you get the extra time off then it’s not going to curtail your enjoyment.” Mr Oldridge believes the campaigning work of the likes of Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough will see more and more holidaymakers turn to train travel over the coming years, and he predicts more employers will make extra days holiday available to them to do so. “If you think that a flight from Bristol to Nice for a family of four saves four tons of CO2 it makes absolute sense for the sake of the climate to go by train,” he said. Another UK firm signed up to Climate Perks’s scheme offering extra holidays to their employees is Wholegrain Digital, which develops websites for ethically-minded organisations. Others include Bristol Credit Union, Friends of the Earth, Farmdrop, Community Energy England and the Welsh energy firm DEG Cymru. Foreign firms who have signed up include the Swedish train company MTR Express, German travel planning firm Fairway and Holland’s Better Places Travel. Climate Perk’s says it hopes to recruit dozens more employers around the continent to the scheme, with the selling point of causing less damage to the environment while enjoying the calm of a long journey.
A number of Swedish companies have pledged to give their employees additional time off if they opt to go on holiday via alternative modes of transport to flying. The scheme is being piloted by Holland -based organisation DEG Cymru . It proposes giving staff four extra days off per year, providing they reach final destinations via a method less environmentally harmful than flying. four UK companies have signed up to the scheme, joined by a handful of corporations from continental Europe . The scheme is targeted at holidaymakers looking to vacation in Europe , where they can use the continent's high-speed rail network.