Sustainable tourism is one of the most growing areas of tourism all over the world. It is a very important tool the help the conservation of nature, heritages and local communities, mainly in less developed countries. It is a way to give something back while traveling and giving a positive impact on the environment.
Sustainable tourism is a way to enrich people in experience and social experience and forms a way of holistic traveling.
The main benefited of sustainable tourism are local communities who haven’t faced tourism yet. Local community tourism is far from mass tourism and artificial entertainment and helps generating an alternative income for their increasing demand of money. A good example for increasing demand of money is, that the pollution of rivers is increasing due to the work of industries and fish migration is decreasing. Fish are the most important nutrient for the indigenous people. But when the number of fish is decreasing, they get into the need of buying other nutrition.
Other positive aspects of tourism in indigenous communities is, that they understand the importance of wildlife for tourism and therefore stop hunting of sometimes endangered species.
In the cultural aspect, tourism can help to protect local cultures and cultural heritages, as indigenous people start to forget their ancestral traditions as external influences, especially of industries, are rising and daily life is changing.
Sustainable traveling also means to use the smallest possible amount of non-renewable resources, in this case fuel. As an example, an airplane traveling from Germany to Spain uses the same amount of fuel as the average usage of one car in one year. So in this case we offer and advice to our visitors to use local terrestrial transportation (bus) instead of airplanes.
Respect Travel is carefully selecting its lodges and hosting partners in the Rainforest and making sure that the projects are working in a sustainable way. All our partners have a strong involvement of local indigenous communities. Almost 100% of the employees are indigenous. Another aspect we focus on is how eco-friendly our partners work. This means that proof the use of as many local products as possible, shared transportation with community members and visitors, waste and plastic reduction and use of energy and light production.
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