Innovate RAP Year Two Progress Report
Our ‘Innovate’ Reconciliation Action Plan was officially endorsed by Reconciliation Australia in early 2020 and guides us in ramping up our commitment to reconciliation.
Our RAP is built around the four key pillars of: Opportunities, Relationships, Governance, and Respect.
Each of these four pillars is broken down into individual actions, all of which are set against timelines, so we can make gradual progress towards a common goal and be held accountable every step of the way.
At the end of the second year of our Innovate RAP, we are pleased to report that we've completed 75% of the actions we committed to.
Year two highlights
At the start of our Innovate RAP journey in 2019, we committed to completely revamping our Australian product range, including at least one First Nations experience in all our Australian trips where feasible. This commitment, coupled with the growth in our Australia operations and domestic product range during COVID-19, has resulted in a considerable increase in First Nations experiences, including:
An increase of 12 First Nations experiences on trips in 2019 to 50 experiences from 41 suppliers across 88 trips in July 2022
The number of travellers who have experienced First Nations culture and heritage on our trips since January 2022 is 1,120 compared with 384 from June 2021 to December 2021.
This year we approached B Lab ANZ about starting a B Corp Reconciliation Impact Circle to share learnings, advance change in the B Corp community, and discuss how RAPs can be acknowledged in the B Corp assessment. The group consists of Future Super, Koskela, T2, Intrepid, Code for Australia, Teachers Mutual Bank, Beyond Bank Australia, and BankVic.
We also participated in the Australian Indigenous Tourism Conference in Cairns whereby representatives delivered a series of presentations to share knowledge and introduce who we are and what we do. Presentation topics included:
- Youth Employment Opportunities
- The Rise of the Conscious Traveller
- How to Create Sustainable, Experience-Rich Product
- Intrepid’s Reconciliation Action Plan Journey
We have made progress with engaging First Nations travel writers and creative content producers and establishing partnerships to create change. Intrepid hosted First Nations artist Rachael Sarra on a content trip to South Australia’s Ikara-Flinders Ranges, along with another well-known content producer, Sarah Davidson and 3 key Intrepid staff. As a result of the trip, the team has come away with a renewed understanding of the importance of highlighting First Nations inclusions and impacts in our marketing as those experiences were the standout highlights of the trip. Intrepid has also purchased an artwork by Rachael Sarra, entitled Networks, which will be hung in the company’s Melbourne/Narrm headquarters.
Intrepid continued to recognise and celebrate important First Nations dates. 34 Intrepid staff took part in an Aboriginal Heritage Walk at the Royal Botanic Gardens and shared a banquet lunch at Big Esso, a Torres Strait owned and run business on a mission to put Indigenous ingredients in kitchens across Australia. The heritage walk included truth telling and the impact of colonisation on Aboriginal people in Melbourne/ Narrm, as well as Aboriginal plant uses, customs and ongoing connection to Country.