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2025 Travel
Travelers are interested in how their presence affects the residents of the places they are visiting. The travel industry is responding.
By Paige McClanahan
A recent global survey of 31,000 users through Booking. com found that 71% of respondents “want to leave their stopover locations more than when they arrived. ” 83% said sustainability was vital to them. Today, users are becoming aware Despite the social effects of tourism, agencies are responding in the same way, helping stopovers to maximize the positive effects (and minimize the negative) of their trips.
The Kind Traveler platform, for example, has started a program in which every guest stay helps fund a local charity. StayAltered offers a “community-powered” accommodation booking platform that connects travelers with independent hosts in more than 30 countries on six continents. Home-swapping platforms like Kindred offer alternatives for travelers who are looking to avoid some of the negative impacts associated with short-term tourist rentals.
Tour operators also train travelers to take on complicated social issues in the communities they visit. The nonprofit Abara organizes three-day “listening trips” along the US-Mexico border, with the goal of giving visitors a sense of the social and human dynamics at play in the region. Telos Group will offer trips to South Africa, the southern United States, Ireland and Northern Ireland, with the purpose of having travelers interact with complicated social histories. Organizations such as Unseen Tours, Invisible Cities and Migrant Tour have designed walking tours whose guides offer visitors selected perspectives on social issues in cities such as London, Edinburgh, Paris and Rome.
There are also new resources for travelers who need to be informed about the social effects of their travel. The RISE Travel Institute offers online courses on guilty travel and other topics; The organization also recently published an e-book on the decolonization of travel. The non-profit Tourism Cares has created a meaningful travel map that showcases organizations, hotels, and tours designed to definitely have an effect on communities and the environment.
Vincie Ho, the executive director of RISE, acknowledges the growing public awareness about tourism’s impacts on communities and the environment, but noted that “the say-do gap is still huge.”
Travelers should be wary of green-washing and “ethics washing,” Ms. Ho said.
“We want to dig deeper and think critically, and not just be sold something because a company says it’s doing the right thing,” he said.
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