What does sustainable travel mean in action? What practical steps can I take to travel more sustainably, to reduce the negative impacts from my trip and maximize the positive impacts? How can sustainable travel actually enhance and improve my travel experiences?

We’ll answer all of those questions about sustainable travel on this page, plus share our best articles and advice the topic so you can learn more about key issues, practical tips on traveling more sustainably and with impact, what to avoid, and how to begin — or continue further — on your sustainable travel journey.

This is not only important for the health of our planet, but it’s also crucial for the well-being of the people and communities we visit and love around the world. It’s a path to deeper connections to nature, local people and culture, and ourselves. We find that traveling with an awareness for sustainability often results in even better and meaningful travel experiences.

Our travel decisions and actions really do make a difference.  

What is sustainable travel?

There are a lot of definitions of sustainable travel out there, but we try to keep it simple: traveling with respect for the local environment, for local socio-economy, and for local people and culture. This respect translates into a greater awareness and caring of the impact of our decisions and actions – good and bad – as travelers.

In practical terms, sustainable travel translates into travel and experiences that:

• Reduce your environmental footprint and support conservation of nature
• Keep travel money local to support local businesses and jobs
• Preserve local culture and traditions

But here’s another thing about sustainable travel: it often creates more immersive and unique travel experiences for you the traveler through deeper connections to the people, place and nature we visit.  

The idea: we respect, care, and preserve to have a meaningful experience now and also so that future generations can also enjoy this big, beautiful and diverse world of ours.

How to travel more sustainably?

We’ve spilled a lot of digital ink on this topic over the years so we’ve collected our best articles below regarding sustainable travel tips and ideas, what to look for in tours and experiences, questions to ask travel companies, pitfalls to watch out for, understanding when wanting to “do good” can do unintended harm, and much more. Remember that sustainability, like travel, is a journey where we are always learning, growing and trying to do better.