As we reflect on 2024, we’re proud of the strides we made toward advancing responsible tourism across the globe. From fostering inclusive climate action to equipping tourism professionals with new knowledge, this year was marked by strategic collaborations, impactful projects, technological advancements, and ongoing educational outreach. Below, we highlight some of the key initiatives and achievements that defined our year.
Building Island Climate Resilience Through Action Planning
This year marked another milestone in our decade-long sustainable tourism partnership with St. Kitts, a small, but ambitious island destination on the front lines of climate change. The destination is actively taking steps to safeguard its future, signing the Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism, aligning with a global effort to halve tourism emissions by 2030 and achieve net zero as soon as possible before 2050.
Over the past year, we supported St. Kitts’s Climate Action Planning process in collaboration with the Ministry of Tourism. This included stakeholder workshops at multiple phases, bringing together public and private sector representatives from across the tourism value chain to shape a collaborative roadmap for tackling climate challenges within the tourism industry. During these workshops, participants shared knowledge, defined actions, and prioritized strategies that deliver both immediate results and long-term, transformational impact. Larger actions were refined into specific, measurable steps, ensuring successful implementation. The participatory nature of this planning process fostered alignment and a shared commitment to climate change mitigation and resilience.
Spreading Knowledge and Practical Guidance to Travelers and the Tourism Industry
In 2024, we continued efforts to inspire and raise awareness of sustainable travel best practices, reaching a global audience of travelers and tourism professionals. Over 190,000 users visited our website, where they accessed educational content that delves into sustainable travel challenges and solutions. We published blogs that unpack complex issues and provide actionable tips to empower travelers and businesses. Topics covered included spotting and avoiding greenwashing, ethical elephant tourism, turtle-friendly travel, and overtourism solutions. In addition to blogs, we released informational resources such as a Sustainable Tour Design Checklist, Elephant Do’s and Don’ts List, and Sustainable Travel Tips List. These user-friendly guides are designed to be quickly referenced when planning trips, providing clear, succinct guidance for adopting responsible practices.
We also facilitated targeted trainings and discussions to engage the industry on critical topics in sustainable tourism. This included developing a training course for Road Scholar to educate their staff and providers on key sustainability areas such as waste reduction, climate action, community empowerment, and wildlife protection. Our “Off-Grid On Target” webinar delved into strategies for reducing emissions in hard-to-abate sectors, emphasizing solutions for minimizing transport emissions in remote destinations. Additionally, we took the stage at industry events, speaking about blue tourism, climate-friendly tours, ESG hotel technology, and building capacity in resource-limited tourism regions.
Building on these initiatives, we released four new episodes in our “Sustainable Travel: Where Next?” documentary series, showcasing transformative tourism initiatives in destinations from the Alps to Palm Springs. These short-form films highlight solutions to tourism’s challenges such as car-free transportation, creative approaches to preventing beach litter, and experiences that preserve wetland ecosystems.
Engaging Businesses and Travelers in Climate Action
Engaging travelers and businesses in climate-conscious travel continued to be a key focus of our work this year. Our Corporate Climate Action and Climate-Friendly Travel Checklists offered clear, practical steps to reduce environmental impact and promote low-carbon tourism. We also enhanced our emissions measurement tools, including our online carbon calculator and tour footprinting tool, to broaden capabilities and improve usability.
Travelers offset over 700 trips with us, and more than 100 businesses partnered to mitigate their carbon footprints. New partners integrated with our API, including Kudos, allowing its clients to seamlessly offset their business travel emissions from within the travel management platform. These offsets supported nine climate projects, helping curb deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, protect orangutan and elephant habitats in Southeast Asia, generate clean energy in the Caribbean, and safeguard ancestral Indigenous lands in Africa – just a glimpse of their broader impact.
Expanding Our Climate Impact Portfolio with Innovative Tech Projects
Earlier this year, we added a new category to our Climate Impact Portfolio: innovative climate tech projects. These projects empower travelers and businesses to play a vital role in scaling emerging solutions that remove carbon from the atmosphere. By addressing emissions already released, these projects help clean up carbon pollution.
So far, we’ve supported three innovative climate tech projects. The Elpitiya and Wonghphai Bamboo biochar projects convert agricultural waste like cinnamon bark, tea stems, and bamboo into a carbon-rich substance. This biochar is resistant to decomposition and is applied to agricultural fields, locking the carbon in the soil for thousands of years. The Rootella project utilizes mycorrhizal fungi to form symbiotic relationships with crops, increasing their natural carbon sequestration abilities. This also creates a stable type of carbon that can remain in the soil for up to 10,000 years, preventing the release of climate-warming greenhouse gasses.
Looking Ahead: Scaling Impact Together in 2025
As we look ahead to 2025, we remain committed to fostering progress and innovation in the tourism industry. By continuing to scale our impact through partnerships, technology, and community engagement, we will build on the momentum of the past year and continue to support travelers, businesses, and destinations in transforming its impact.
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