Sustainable Travel: People

Improving life for people

Our People, Places & Planet plan works towards improving life through travel – for the places we visit on our adventures, the people we meet when there, and the planet which hosts us. Here, we describe the People pillar of our plan.

We know how much travel can enrich lives because our adventures are full of horizon-expanding and life-changing moments. Whether a fleeting moment at a local market stall or being welcomed into someone’s home, when done well, travel can open doors for visitors and hosts alike. According to the World Travel and Tourism Council, the travel industry supports 1 in 10 global jobs, and in many of our destinations, tourism is an economic lifeline for communities.  

The People pillar of our People, Places & Planet plan seeks to protect the people we visit and drive economic empowerment in their communities. This means supporting local businesses, boosting employment opportunities, and ensuring that your money has a positive impact on the communities you visit.

Here are some of the ways we seek to support people through the way we create and run our trips, and use our Foundation’s funds… 

Our trips:

• We seek to support local — guides, accommodations, food venues and experiences — which not only helps the local economy but makes our trips more compelling.
• Where possible, our trips visit and contribute to community-owned cooperatives and local social enterprises.
• We pursue equality and the protection of human rights across all of our trips, and have high standards of welfare for guides and porters.
• We avoid (and where appropriate, actively remove) contrived cultural experiences that are not respectful of people.  Instead, we actively seek to support the preservation of cultural and traditional heritage, through our itineraries and the knowledge of our local guides.
• We adhere to a child protection policy that allows no orphanage tourism and minimal school visits. We’re also part of ABTA’s industry-wide Orphanage Tourism Taskforce.
• For further insight into how each of our trips supports local communities, look for the Sustainable Travel section in the trip notes.

Our giving:

• Offering support to our destination communities so they can recover and rebuild following the impact of COVID-19; see more here.
• Taking disadvantaged children on educational days out to learn about their own cultural and natural heritage; see more here. 
• Training porters and providing scholarships for female guides in Tanzania; see more here.
  
• Supporting a range of grassroots initiatives for hard-to-reach communities across the Himalaya see more here.
• Enabling all our Inca Trail porters to visit Machu Pichu themselves; see more here. 

Read more about our Foundation’s community empowerment work here.