Our Responsible Travel Policies

We are passionate about responsible travel so we have created our own policies below which explain the details of how we maximise the benefits of our holidays and the ethical standards we hold ourselves to. If you'd like to know more about any aspect of these policies, please do ask us as we love to talk about them!

Hotels are such a big part of your footprint when you travel that it’s really important to get them right. Of course you also may spend a fair amount of time at your hotel, so we hand-pick places that are much more than just a place to lay your head. All our preferred accommodation options are independently-owned, small and characterful and responsibly-run.

We look for evidence that they are reinvesting in the local economy, employing local people and spending the money in the area. For example, family-run guest houses tend to buy in local goods and services both for personal consumption and to run their businesses. Nearly all our accommodations source their food at nearby markets or directly from farmers, helping to support the rural economy.

We require that hotels employ local people in all or nearly all their posts, including management positions, so that it is not only the low-paid jobs that are offered. They should also provide training in hospitality skills and preferably languages, to help staff develop their careers.

As a minimum, we ask that hotels donate and/or encourage their guests to donate to local projects and charities, but we prefer those that take a more active role in community development, for example by funding their own projects or promoting local culture.

All the hotels, guest houses and other accommodation we promote are required to meet these minimum environmental standards (although many go much further):

• implements water management practices such as reusing wastewater or reducing laundry.
• implements energy saving practices such as solar heating or reducing air conditioning.
• sources food from the local area, especially directly from local farmers/markets.
• provides advice and information to guests about ways to reduce their environmental footprint.

We prefer hotels and guesthouses that actively reduce their use of plastic and those that use renewable or appropriate technologies to reduce fuel consumption. Some of our accommodations incorporate environmentally-friendly design features such as using recycled materials and traditional building techniques.

Nature and wildlife experiences are at the heart of many of our trips and are often one of the main things our customers are looking for when they travel. Furthermore conserving, protecting and strengthening the natural world through tourism is one of the core aims of The Beyond Tourism Co. and we take it very seriously.

By sending them our customers, we financially support many national parks and private reserves that are dedicated to preserving the habitats of a huge number of species. Moreover, it helps to demonstrate the importance and rewards of conservation both to governments making decisions about national development and to local people who may be faced with changes to their lifestyles or conflict with livestock.

It is equally important that these natural havens are enjoyed in a responsible way, so we provide pre-trip advice as well as local guides to help our customers respect sensitive sites. Sometimes these are mandated by government, but often visitors may just be accompanied by a single guide for their whole trip who lacks the personal connection to, and investment in, protecting natural areas.

In some countries we send our customers to hotels and communities that have private reserves, supporting their ecotourism models and efforts to preserve natural areas. A great example of this is Los Campesinos reserve in Costa Rica, set up by local vanilla farmers who chose to conserve the incredible biodiversity of their lands by switching to ecotourism, rather than gradually destroy it through their own agricultural practices.

Wherever we can, we also choose hotels and businesses that actively defend particularly fragile or threatened areas. This is especially the case across Latin America, stretching from Guatemala’s Las Guacamayas biological station that defends the rainforests and communities of El Tigre National Park, to community-run lodges in the Amazon basin fighting to keep it a haven for wildlife and out of the hands of the oil industry.

It would undoubtedly be preferable for animals to be able to live undisturbed in their natural habitats and we support ‘no-touch’ animal attractions that emulate this as closely as possible. However it is unfortunately impossible in some cases for them to live in the wild, when human encroachment has made their habitats unviable or when they been habituated to or abused by people.

In these cases we support animal sanctuaries whilst recognising there is a great deal of green-washing out there, with many organisations claiming to be sanctuaries when they are actually principally aimed at making money through tourism rather than helping animals. This is especially true of tiger attractions in Southeast Asia, which we will never send customers to.

When we do work with a sanctuary, such as for elephants in Thailand, we undertake extensive research to determine how well the animals are treated and to find those that adhere to the strictest welfare standards. As a result, there are only a few that we will use and we aim to be as sure as possible about them. We keep them constantly under review in case they change hands or conditions deteriorate, through feedback from returning customers and checks by independent experts and our local partners.

We try to include stays with local communities in our trips wherever possible, because community-based tourism is potentially one of the best ways to spread the benefits of tourism to those that most need it. This includes using community guides as well as accommodation and we work closely with our ground operators to ensure that our customers have a high-quality experience and money is distributed fairly, for example by rotating the families that host visitors. Community-based tourism is particularly tricky to get right, so we ensure the operations are monitored on a regular basis and there is ample chance for our customers to feed back.

Communities often look to tourism as an alternative to more destructive forms of development, or to help preserve their local environment or traditions. They will have invested a lot of time, effort and hope in developing activities to attract visitors and we and our local partners have an important part to play in helping them bring their ideas to market. We aim to incorporate these activities directly into our holidays wherever we can, to encourage other communities and tourists to try them and ultimately to support community empowerment and sustainable livelihoods.

We actively search out excursions and activities that put local people at the centre, protect the environment and spread the economic benefits of tourism. Through these experiences, local people are empowered by the opportunities created for employment, development and conservation, while visitors have the chance to take part in high quality, often unique experiences safe in the knowledge that they are having a direct and positive impact.

In order to be as sustainable as possible, we do not donate to charities or projects that are not connected to tourism, as is often done by travel companies as a way of offsetting the negative impacts of tourism. Instead, we focus on organisations that use tourism as a positive for livelihoods or environmental strategy, for example restaurant schools that provide training for disadvantaged young people as well as delicious food. We make them part of our day to day operations to help change the model of tourism from the inside, not just a ‘good cause’.

Our guides are the life blood of our trips and are often what makes a great holiday into an unforgettable one. As such, we value them highly and work with our local partners to make sure they receive fair pay and conditions. We don’t employ guides and drivers directly as they are mostly self-employed, but we try to find the best guides and book them regularly as well as keeping some drivers on retainer, which helps to keep their incomes more stable.

We use local guides on our treks and where tips are appropriate they must be in addition to a fair wage. Too often, tourist tips are treated as a top-up to porters’ and guides’ payments rather than as a reward for good service. We aim to be transparent, to ensure that all our porters are are treated in accordance with the International Porter Protection Group guidelines and to advise our customers about the appropriate amount to tip.

Overtourism, where the sheer number of visitors threatens to overwhelm destinations and the people who live there, has been an increasing problem in recent years. Hotspots like Venice, Barcelona and Dubrovnik host many thousands of visitors per day, particularly from cruise ships, who may contribute little to the local economy and put local amenities out of business. Sometimes this is compounded by insensitive, rude or even illegal behaviour that further alienates local people.

To stop the problem spreading we feel it is important to encourage visitors to get away from the most famous sites and explore. Many of our trips are geared towards exactly this, rewarding you with a more authentic, memorable and fulfilling trip. When we include ‘must-see’ attractions we try to visit them in a different way to alleviate overcrowding, for example approaching Angkor Wat from the back gate, taking alternative routes to Machu Picchu, visiting Yaxha as well as Tikal, or sailing to the hidden parts of Ha Long Bay.

It is important that visitors also play their part in acting responsibly. We provide our customers with advice on local customs, how to behave sensitively and how they can contribute to the destination they are visiting. We also provide information on the social and political situation in country on our website and in pre-trip documentation.

We believe that the best way to help limit the environmental impact of our tours is to stop wasteful and polluting practices at the point of consumption. We provide advice on our website and in pre-trip documentation to help our guests adopt appropriate behaviour such as not littering, reusing plastic bottles and switching off lights and air conditioning when not in their rooms. We will also be giving a free refillable filtering water bottle to everyone who books with us, in order to minimise the amount of bottled water that is drunk while on our trips.

Of course it’s not all up to the individual traveller, so we only use hotels that manage their environmental impact, particularly water, energy and waste and food sourcing. They also often provide advice and help for guests to reduce their environmental footprint.

We have chosen local operators that share our commitment to environmental responsibility and work with them to minimise waste and pollution on our tours. For example, by making sure rubbish is taken back from sensitive areas and providing clean water refills in their vehicles. We ask them to help our customers during their holiday to understand the environmental damage tourism can create and what they can do to mitigate it.