26. Sustainable Vacation or Bust!

Here’s today’s listener letter:

Staying home during the pandemic gave me a lot of time to think about the travel I used to do. I’m glad I don’t have to take work trips anymore, but I miss going on vacation with my family. I think I’m ready to start getting out there again, so my question is, how do I take a sustainable vacation? I’m wondering things like: How can I make sure that the money I spend ends up in the local economy? Doesn't destroy the environment? Doesn't take advantage of the locals? 

Thank you for sending in this question! Sustainable vacations are probably going to become more popular in the future, they just have to- as we look for more sustainability at home, it’s only a matter of time before more travelers are wanting to live by those same values on the road too. You used the term sustainable vacation in your letter, although I understand that to mean a vacation that doesn’t harm the local community or environment, sometimes I get the feeling that when most people use the word sustainable they are really referring mostly to the impact on the geographical environment, so I’m going to call what you’re looking for a socially responsible vacation.

I’m going to suggest a handful of ideas and then I’d love to hear back from you on what you end up doing.

First idea is to think about where you’re going and when. And this is one of the harder ones, so I’ll put it up front. And then I’ll suggest a few easier things to do to take a more socially responsible vacation. When it comes to deciding where to go, you might take factors into account such as whether this place you have in mind is currently being overrun by tourists to the point that there are signs of impending damage to the community or environment. In that case you might switch the location of your vacation or maybe think about changing when you go to an off-peak season, if you have that flexibility.

Some travelers will take into account some of the political issues in a place. I was just listening to a podcast called Michelle is Money Hungry where she was talking about the list of states that she is boycotting for things like a lack of support for women’s reproductive choice or a lack of transgender rights protections. That episode was on September 8 of 2021 if you want to hear her history of boycotting states. I have friends that are boycotting entire countries because of their human rights violations.

So that’s the hardest suggestion I have for today. Rethink where and when you’re going.

The rest of my suggestions are much easier.

Look for green hotels or even some B corporations within the travel and leisure industry. Green hotels are those who are trying to reduce the environmental impact of their construction and operations in an area. B Corporations are something we have discussed before on this podcast, if you go back to episode 10, we talked about the steps you have to go through to get this kind of a certification. In short, one of these travel and leisure companies would have gone through steps to demonstrate that they are committed to profitability as well as being a corporation that takes care of its people and the earth. There are lots of labels you’ll notice once you start googling green hotels or sustainable travel companies. I am going to include a link to a pdf guide which helps you figure out what all those labels mean. It’s a little bit like when organic food started to become more popular in the United States and we found out pretty quickly that there were all these various labels, some of which were actually certified and others which really weren’t. Same thing with sustainable travel companies and hotels. So if you want to go deep with this, check out the pdf guide in the show notes and then you’ll know how to read the labels in the future. If you don’t want to go deep with this, but you are looking for green hotels or sustainable travel companies, check out responsibletravel.com I found them during my research for this episode and I flagged a few trips I want to look into for the future with some atypical features like one of the trips I was looking at was a small group trip to another country and they mentioned that the group would be taking local mass transit, which really appeals to me. 

And then my final suggestion is probably my favorite which is to try to hire and shop locally while you are on vacation. So if you’re hiring a tour guide, consider hiring a local guide versus going with one of the international companies. If you are booking a place to stay, consider a local bed and breakfast. Consider eating at local restaurants rather than international chains. Same with shopping. 

One more thing I’m going to link is a guide from the Center for Responsible Travel which has even more tips than what we discussed today. There’s a whole section on being culturally sensitive which I really enjoyed reading. . I’ll include the link in the show notes. As always, if you want to join the Spend Donate Invest newsletter or submit a question, email the address listed in the show notes.

Center for Responsible Travel tips for responsible travel
https://30ghywahyur3pzyoi3qg4r9c-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/213/2021/03/responsible-travel-tips.pdf

NYTimes piece on how to think about booking sustainable travel
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/22/travel/sustainable-travel.html?action=click&module=Editors%20Picks&pgtype=Homepage

How to Read Sustainable Travel Company Labels
https://destinet.eu/who-who/civil-society-ngos/ecotrans/publications/guide-through-label-jungle-1/download/en/5/Labelguide%202016%20EN.pdf?action=view 

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