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 our trips, run our core business and use our Foundation’s funds…

Creating our adventures:

• 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 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.
• We avoid (and where appropriate actively remove) contrived cultural experiences that are not respectful of people.  
• For further insight into how each of our trips supports local communities, look for the Responsible Tourism section in the trip notes.

Playing our part:

• Our cross-company Community Empowerment Working Group is establishing a new process to enable customers to pack helpful items for destination communities.

• Meanwhile, our cross-company Gender Equality working group is facilitating knowledge-sharing between local partners, to help boost employment opportunities for women in our destinations.

Giving back:

Our Foundation's mission is to harness the power of travel to improve life in hard-to-reach places. Some of our people-orientated projects include:

• Taking disadvantaged children on educational days out to learn about their own cultural and natural heritage.
• Training porters and providing scholarships for female guides in Tanzania.
• Helping help our destination communities recover and rebuild following the impact of COVID-19 (see more here)

Read more about our Foundation’s work here.