Make Travel Matter. Plan Your Next Trip with a Purpose.
Give back and get more when you travel with purpose. Discover how you can help change the world on your next trip while exploring it from home in the meantime.
Both travelers and travel companies are stepping up to the plate to support sustainability projects around the globe. Choose your cause and let’s take a step forward together.
Do you ever wonder how tourism affects communities around the world? Then now is the time to make a difference by traveling responsibly and incorporating sustainability into your next vacation. Whether it’s engaging with local cultures or protecting resources, you can make a change.
TreadRight TreadRight is a not-for-profit foundation established by The Travel Corporation. All travel brands under TTC group — some of which include Insight Vacations, Uniworld Boutique River Cruises Collection, Contiki Holidays, and Red Carnation Hotels — give financial support to TreadRight, which in turn supports sustainable tourism projects around the world. The projects are focused on three key pillars: people, wildlife, and the planet. Believing that travel is a gift that comes with responsibility, TreadRight supports 55 projects in 280 communities in 26 countries.
Partners include the Kari Foundation in Australia which encourages indigenous and non-indigenous communities to work together on initiatives that will provide indigenous advancement; the Centro de Textiles Tradicionales del Cusco which strives to keep Cusco’s weaving traditions alive, the Wildlife Conservation Fund’s Big Cat Fund which seeks to conserve all big cat species, and the worldwide Single-Use Plastics Elimination Initiative.
Abercrombie & Kent Bike Shop Program Abercrombie & Kent has over fifty sustainability projects throughout the world. One of their most innovative is the Bike Shop Program which has been set up in eight countries in Africa and the Middle East. Donated bikes are collected and sent to the bike shops, each of which employs five women and makes it possible for them to support their families through their salaries. The bikes then empower their local communities by making it possible for health care workers to see more patients, students to get to distant schools, and workers to get to work in a climate friendly and affordable fashion.
Cool Effect By incorporating Cool Effect’s Travel Offset Tool into its platform, Ensemble Travel Group is the first consortium that enables its advisors to help clients offset their carbon footprint by donating to sustainability projects. Cool Effect is a non-profit devoted to reducing carbon emissions and fighting climate change. To date, it has reduced over one million tons of carbon from the atmosphere. Using the flight length and passenger load, the Travel Offset Tool calculates the quantity of carbon emissions a person uses. On a 2,500-mile flight on a 280-passenger airplane, each passenger would use one ton of carbon emissions which can be offset by a donation of $7.80. Passengers can donate that amount to one of Cool Effect’s fifteen projects that are devoted to such causes as protecting the rainforest, saving endangered orangutans, helping indigenous communities, and conserving wildlife.
Green Globe Certified Hotels
Part of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council, Green Globe is supported by the United Nations Foundation. To get certified, hotels have made changes such as: Using solar rooftop heaters for all hot water needs; Getting water from desalinization plants; Using salt-based pool purification systems rather than chlorine; Composting waste and raising their own vegetables for restaurant use; and purchasing fresh fruit and vegetables grown locally and organically. The following Ensemble Preferred Hotels are Green Globe Certified: The Colony Club in Barbados; Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic, and Half Moon Bay in Jamaica.
Rainforest Alliance
Rainforest Alliance-certified hotels are required to minimize their environmental footprint and support workers, local cultures, and surrounding communities and ecosystems. These Preferred Hotels are certified: Banyan Tree Mayakoba, Hotel Andaz Mayakoba, and Zoetry Paraiso de la Bonita.
How can we help you? We're here to support you with expert advice and insider travel information. Get in touch with us.