Sustainable Travel

Traveling Safely During Covid: Research, Planning and Managing Risk

Planning and Travel Tips During COVID-19

How can one travel safely during Covid? What Covid research and travel planning can you do manage risk while still having a fun vacation? What any additional travel safety measures should one take? How might choices as to where to go, activities, accommodation and transport change during the pandemic?

In this article we address all of this, focusing on the stuff and choices in our control with the goal to mind the health and safety of others, as well as yourself. These lessons apply not only to travel but also to daily life, during the pandemic and beyond. We touch on decision-making, logistics, managing risk, flexibility, adapting to new information, managing expectations, gratitude and satisfaction. Oh, and how it's still possible to have fun and enjoy yourself even in the midst of pandemic challenges, risks and uncertainties.

Continue Reading

How To Support Local Women During Your Travels

On International Women’s Day we look at the importance of investing in women and offer some practical ideas on how travelers can seek out organizations, tours, and businesses that directly invest in or support the well-being of women. In this way, the travel decisions and spending choices we make can make a big difference to support local women, their businesses, their communities and ultimately our collective future.

Continue Reading

How Social Media Influencers Can Use Their Power to Combat Overtourism

Social media tips to help combat overtourism.

Can social media influencers on Instagram use their sharing and promotional power – something which helped accelerate overtourism – to affect and shift traveler decisions for positive impact? We offer a set of tips and considerations that each of us — professional influencers as well as everyday social media users – can employ to be part of a solution to overtourism.

Continue Reading

Travel for Social Impact and Activism

Social Activism in Travel, city walk in Delhi, India

As we witness the evolution and integration of social impact in travel, we find more travel experiences charged with a kind of social purpose and activism. In this way, otherwise marginalized groups like single mothers, homeless children, human trafficking survivors, and victims of acid attacks have new opportunities to tell their story and find employment in tourism. As innovation and access to these types of experiences grows, the tourism industry may increasingly become a force for social change. Here’s how and why.

Continue Reading

How Do You Know Your Travel Money Stays Local?

Local Impact of Tourism

When you travel, is there any way you can “follow the money” to ensure that whatever you spend on your trip stays local and benefits the communities you visit? This article offers a few ideas on how to do that and highlights some movements and methodologies afoot in the travel industry that might help.

Continue Reading

A Favela Tour in Vidigal, Rio de Janeiro: How to Do One Respectfully and Responsibly

Planeterra Vidigal Favela Tour in Rio de Janeiro

In this piece, we explore the nature and meaning of favelas in Brazil and the ethics of favela tours. Through conversations with residents and community leaders in Vidigal favela in Rio de Janeiro, we consider how community-driven favela tour experiences can create positive social impact and reduce the exclusion and separative otherness of marginalized communities.

Continue Reading