Responsible Travel

Responsible Travel

We all know travel enriches our lives - those awe-inspiring, horizon-expanding, life-changing experiences we have on our adventures. And at Exodus Travels we also firmly believe travel should improve life for the people and places we visit too.

So our People, Places and Planet plan lays out the ways in which we persistently and passionately seek to improve life through the way we run our business, the way we give back through our Foundation and - perhaps most crucially of all - the way we create our adventures. You can find out more in the notes for each of our trips, but below is an overview of our approach:

The places we visit

• By travelling in small groups we can ‘tread lightly’, minimising our impact on local resources and immersing ourselves more easily in the local cultural and social heritage.
• Protection of animals and respect for biodiversity has always been at the core of our ethos. We work hard alongside our partners on the ground to ensure all our trips are free from damaging practices such as elephant riding and captive sealife tourism, and are proactively contributing to the conservation of the precious and unique landscapes we love to explore.

• The scourge of plastic waste and the damage it does to our beautiful world has not escaped anyone’s attention. We have now eliminated single-use plastic bottles from 99% of our trips, and are proactively reducing the use of further single-use plastics, reducing food waste and encouraging recycling across all destinations.
  
  

The people we meet

• We seek to ensure that we support local business as far as possible through each trip – locally-owned hotels, restaurants, food markets – not only does this help boost the local economy, it also makes each trip a much more interesting experience of the place you’re visiting!
• Our fantastic and expert tour leaders are almost all local to the country you’re visiting. Which not only means they can introduce you to the best restauranteurs, bartenders and craftspeople in town, they can also let you know how to travel in a way which is most respectful to local people and cultures.
• We pursue equality and the protection of human rights across all our trips, going above and beyond with care for porters who work for us, avoiding damaging practices like orphanage tourism, and proactively boosting employment opportunities for women in cultures and countries where this is harder.
  
  

The planet we explore
We and our clients are a community of passionate travellers who deeply care about the protection of our world’s most beautiful and unique places. We firmly believe in the positive social and environmental impact that sustainable travel can bring. But we also appreciate the tension between these benefits and the urgency with which our global society needs to reduce its carbon footprint. We work hard to do so through our trips by:

• Favouring smaller, locally-run accommodation – and eco-hotels where possible - versus big hotel chains which have a bigger impact on the surrounding environments
• Choosing accommodation and restaurants using locally-sourced food which has not been transported long distances
• Enabling there are always vegetarian – if not vegan - options available in the places we take our clients
• Being mindful to try to opt for lower impact in-country transportation, such as public transport where possible. We never use big coaches or cruise ships

But we know we can do more. And we’re in the process of developing a plan to reduce our carbon footprint further, and helping our clients to do the same. Part of this process includes asking our communities how they think we should be helping them take lower carbon travels. So, if you have any feedback or comments, send us an email at [email protected]