Travel Green List 2024: Tour operators making a difference

In an era when there are more ways than ever to make a positive difference while travelling, there are few excuses for merely lounging in a hammock – especially when you could help make your own, alongside people with hearing disabilities. This meet-the-changemakers ethos is encapsulated by Wild Frontiers’ Adventures with Purpose tailor-made trips. These include elements of charitable, wildlife and community-driven tourism, from visiting a non-profit Cambodian circus founded by refugees to staying at a community-run mountain camp in Namibia or taking part in a hammock workshop in Nicaragua. The company donates some of its profits to selected initiatives through the Wild Frontiers Foundation – and you can visit these projects on your travels.

More information: wildfrontierstravel.com

Travelling overland produces 80% to 90% less carbon emissions than short-haul flights – so one small UK company is on a mission to make flight-free travel mainstream. Byway creates custom holidays that utilise rail, ferry and bus to explore diverse European countries, optimising routes for enjoyment (and climate) rather than speed, and handling the complex task of planning multi-country overland trips so you don’t have to. Itineraries are also designed to support local economies and reduce overtourism by minimising time spent in honey-pot destinations, instead featuring lesser-known but equally alluring places. Last year, Byway also launched a carbon-labelling feature, so you can see the carbon you’ve saved by travelling overland compared with flying – helping reinforce just how significantly individual actions can add up.

More information: byway.travel

For those wanting to get more hands-on with understanding and conserving global biodiversity, one concept really stands out: the citizen-science expedition. Exodus Adventure Travels has launched Citizen Science departures on many of its tours, collecting eDNA samples from freshwater sites in destinations as diverse as the Baltics and Botswana. At the end of each trip the results are not only relayed to you, explaining which species have been detected, but also contribute to a worldwide eBioAtlas helping conservationists build a better picture of the planet’s biodiversity. It’s all part of Exodus’ ‘nature first’ approach, which includes a pledge to rewild 100 square metres in Italy’s Apennine Mountains for every traveller who books with the company.

More information: exodus.co.uk

In the past, the onus has been on travellers to ask tour operators to show how their trips are sustainable; now, at last, some are pre-empting that question. The launch of Audley Travel’s Responsible Choice classification system is a great example. It’s designed to make it easier for travellers to choose hotels, businesses and experiences that place a greater emphasis on environmental sustainability and supporting communities – such as a Patagonian hotel that’s created a conservation reserve. Thanks to this helpful label, it’s easy to pick options that support local businesses, educate staff, and promote conservation and biodiversity efforts. The collection is growing fast: by the end of 2024, Audley aims to have identified nearly 500 Responsible Choice providers.

More information: audleytravel.com

As few as 1% of all enterprises in Australia are owned by First Nations people, according to 2021 figures. Thankfully, this proportion is growing rapidly, and Indigenous-owned tourism businesses are increasingly receiving greater prominence and support. Importantly, the travel industry has ample potential to provide both employment for under-served communities and a way to protect First Nations heritage, traditions and values. Aboriginal-owned Girri Girra is among a wave of operators helping preserve the stories and cultures of Australia’s Traditional Owners. Its tours, led entirely by Aboriginal guides, recount the 65,000-year-old history of New South Wales’ Central Coast, using sites such as the rock carvings of Bouddi National Park to explore the spiritual importance of the land.

More information: girrigirra.com.au

Money spent by travellers can benefit communities that welcome them – unless it’s diverted away, as too often happens. How can you be sure your cash stays local? Community-based tourism is one option; another is to choose an operator employing local people. All 24 staff members at ATI Holidays in Namibia, for example, are Namibian residents – 19 of them previously disadvantaged – and receive medical aid cover and other benefits. By recruiting and training people from areas short on resources or opportunities, the company helps them to support themselves and their dependants, empowering the wider community. Since the start of 2023, the company’s Future Namibia Fund has donated some NAD100,000 (over £4,000) to partner charities, from a primary school to lion and giraffe conservation projects.

More information: ati-holidays.com

A 2021 study suggested that the carbon footprint of a large cruise ship can be bigger than that of 12,000 cars. Recognising the industry’s environmental impact, some operators are rethinking how they work. Among those taking the lead is HX (formerly Hurtigruten Expeditions), which has been part of a number of firsts in the industry, from banning the use of heavy fuel oils – major emitters of pollutant gases – in 2009, to removing all unnecessary single-use plastic in its fleet. It has also launched hybrid-powered expedition cruise ships, whose batteries can be charged in ports where renewables account for much of the energy supply. Indeed, the company became the first to connect to shoreside electricity in Iceland in 2023, where around 85% of the country’s grid is founded on renewable energy.

More information: travelhx.com/uk

Partnering with non-profit organisations is a great way for tour operators to increase their positive impacts in destinations they explore. Showcasing such initiatives can also provide unforgettable experiences for travellers – for example, buzzing between Jaipur’s rose-hued palaces in a similarly rubicund electric rickshaw. Intrepid has partnered with the Indian NGO behind the Pink City Rickshaw Company, which provides employment to some 200 women from low-income households, training them in a profession traditionally reserved for men, and funding a similar scheme to launch soon in Varanasi. Together with Intrepid’s carbon-labelling scheme, rating the emissions of 500-plus itineraries, such initiatives provide evidence of the potential travel has to creative positive impacts in the places we visit.

More information: intrepidtravel.com

In 2022, Explore joined a growing number of tour operators in auditing the carbon footprint of its trips and business operations. Importantly, it used this information to reduce emissions still further – reworking existing itineraries by swapping flights for less-polluting forms of transport, designing new trips and scrapping tours with high emissions that couldn’t be cut or justified. Many tours in the remodelled line-up epitomise the joys of slow travel: the new Taste of Southern France itinerary, for example, sampling the caves, castles and wineries between Bordeaux and Toulouse on local transport. As a result of such efforts, Explore cut emissions from its trips by 7.2% per person, per night in the first year of this work, and aims to halve them by 2030.

More information: explore.co.uk

Transport – flights, buses and so on – comprises nearly 50% of the carbon footprint of global tourism, according to one recent study. To address this, HF Holidays has explored innovative ways to reduce such impacts – it’s been offering train trips to Europe since 1914, and has an enticing roster of Rail Adventures. But the company’s Tread Lightly escapes – a series of UK-based guided walking tours – go several steps further, removing the need for transport altogether during each break. Whether strolling the grassy hills of Shropshire or the paths of the Peak District, each day’s walking starts and finishes at your country house base where you’ll dine on dishes showcasing the best of local produce – all without a car or coach transfer in sight.

More information: hfholidays.co.uk

To deal with the pollution caused by travel, first you have to know the scale of the problem. In 2021, Pura Aventura staked its claim to be the first UK tour operator to publish the total carbon footprint of all of its trips. And with its Travel Positive Charter, it has pledged to offset 160% of transport emissions (road, air, boat) for every trip, whether or not a customer booked outbound travel through them. How? It’s partnered with Taking Root, a Nicaraguan non-profit that’s planted 8 million trees so far, and which works with local farmers to ensure these trees are safeguarded. Pura Aventura also commits 1% of its revenue to environmental causes, setting an impressive standard.

More information: pura-aventura.com

The environmental impact of cruises is of growing concern for travellers, so it’s no surprise many are turning to sailing trips to minimise emissions. Even these aren’t always totally eco-friendly, though, particularly when petrol motors or generators are called into action. Sailing tour operators Sunsail and The Moorings have begun replacing their vessels’ outboard motors with electric alternatives – saving an estimated 7,273L of fossil fuel in 2023. And by fitting onboard water purifiers and increasing the generation of solar-powered electricity on boats used for skippered and bareboat yacht and catamaran trips, they’re reducing environmental impacts still further.

More information: moorings.com; sunsail.com.

As well as being a huge driver of pollution and littering, overtourism has a major impact on local quality of life. It’s an issue that Undiscovered Balkans is addressing by diverting travellers away from cities such as Dubrovnik in Croatia, which in 2019 received a staggering 36 tourists for every city resident. This operator’s e-biking, cycling and kayaking tours instead introduce visitors to more rural, less-trodden destinations across the region, bringing income to smaller communities that would otherwise see little footfall. For example, it championed multi-day tourism to villages around Lake Skadar, straddling the Albania-Montenegro border, where short stays were previously the norm – helping local businesses flourish.

More information: undiscoveredbalkans.com

Responsible travel isn’t just about lowering carbon emissions– it also means ensuring that small communities, which hold the key to safeguarding their local environments, reap the benefits of tourism. Journey Latin America supports a wide variety of small community initiatives aimed at reducing economic disparity, many of which travellers can experience first-hand on its trips. From funding the painting of houses in a Guatemalan village on Lake Atitlán to visiting the Colombian barrio of Moravia – a former shanty town built on a landfill dump in Medellín – and meeting the people whose efforts transformed the neighbourhood, its tours offer something all too rare: a chance to make a difference alongside those whose actions have had tangible positive impacts on their communities.

More information: journeylatinamerica.com