Forces For Good Podcast Season 4 — Episode 2: Can travel be sustainable?

Tourism has the potential to preserve cultures, protect ecosystems, and create meaningful livelihoods. But it can also disrupt communities and accelerate environmental harm. This episode of Forces For Good takes a closer look at what it takes to ensure that the impact of travel is regenerative for people and the planet alike. 

Featuring insights from Julie Cheetham, COO of Travalyst, and Rodrigo Atuesta, Co-Owner and CIO of Impulse Travel, a B Corp based in Colombia, tune in now to explore: 

• What does responsible travel really look like

• How can data help travelers make better choices 

• And how can tourism contribute to peacebuilding and community empowerment 

Listen now: https://lnk.to/BLab-ForcesForGood-Sustainable-Travel

TRANSCRIPT: Episode 2 — Can travel be sustainable?

This is Forces For Good, a podcast from B Lab, the nonprofit network powering the global B Corp movement. I’m your host, Irving Chan-Gomez. Forces For Good takes a hard look at how businesses are helping to solve the biggest social and environmental challenges of our time. 

For many of us, the anticipation of planning and taking a trip is one of the best feelings in the world. The excitement builds as your trip gets closer and closer. You might spend hours checking flights, picking out hotels, researching the best beaches or museums, and booking excursions. But how much time do you spend researching the impact of your presence in a place?

Let me explain what I mean by that. Tourism can have a huge impact on a region. It can disrupt local culture, but it can also create job opportunities. It can preserve ecosystems, but it can also destroy them. It can change how an area is perceived globally, and it can change how we see the world around us! It's up to travelers - and the hotels, airlines, and tour providers - whether the impact of travel is positive or negative.

I have Julie Cheetham, COO of Travalyst, with me for this episode, as well as Rodrigo Atuesta, Co-Owner & CIO of Impulse Travel.

Travalyst is a global non-profit with the ambition to change the impact of travel for good through partnerships with big industry players like Booking.com, TripAdvisor, and Google. Impulse Travel is a B Corp certified tour planner based in Colombia, creating meaningful experiences for its customers. 

Rodrigo: We have a tour that is called Taste of Change. It's a gastronomic tour in Botta to understand Colombia’s peace process and agreement. And it's one of the tours that creates a more positive impact of all the tours that we have designed because this involves more than 12 different social enterprises in one tour, and they all benefit from this tour. So it's about. Understanding Colombia’s conflict and peace agreement, which is a topic that is interesting for everyone, but it's done in a very fun and entertaining way because you're doing it through food, you're doing it through coffee, through ice cream, through chocolate, uh, through coca tea.

Wow! I'm ready to book a flight to Colombia so I can join Rodrigo for this tour. He's been acting as a tour guide and representative of Colombia for most of his life. 

Rodrigo: I became a tour guide by accident when I was in university. I'm from Colombia, Budha, born and raised, and I was in university studying industrial engineering, and I had always been part of it, since I was like 15 years old, I was part of couch surfing, this platform in which you could source or host people from all over the world, uh, without any economic exchange.

It was just for the sake of it. Of meeting people and having these legitimate traveler-to-traveler interactions. So, I had been doing that since I was very, very young.

In college, Rodrigo started offering tours as a way to make money. Over time, that business grew into Impulse Travel. 

Rodrigo: We are a local travel company in Colombia. We are an A DMC, which stands for Destination Management Company. So that means that we take care of travel arrangements, especially for travelers coming from other countries. Colombia, and we focus primarily on leisure and educational travel. 

In 2016, Colombia signed a peace agreement between armed guerrilla groups and the government. The agreement ended a decades-long armed conflict and opened the country up to more tourism. Rodrigo and his business partners saw tourism as a way to help the country heal. They doubled down on the social impact side of their tours.

Rodrigo: Impulse on the one side is this energy that you must have as a traveler to go and jump into the unknown and to get out of your comfort zone, and to find reach experiences and to go beyond the surface. So that requires an internal impulse, but at the same time, uh, we decided to work with a lot of social enterprises all across Colombia.

That needed this impulse to get to the main stage and tell their stories with the world, uh, to inspire travelers with the amazing things they're doing in terms of peace building and social transformation, and also to support their, uh, economic aspect of their organizations to help them to help and thrive.

While Rodrigo is working on the ground with a grassroots endeavor, Travalyst is working with industry giants. Many of their partners are technically competitors, but they've all come together to aggregate data and make it comparable. Here's an example… 

Julie: So one of the great successes that we've had, uh, in the first few years of Travelers is with our coalition and with external, uh, subject matter experts developed what we call the Tim or the Travel Impact Model. And this is a flight emissions calculator, essentially, that is housed and operated by Google on behalf of the coalition.

Everyone has open access to it. It's a free, open-access tool, and it means that if you are a traveler and you are searching for a flight, whether you're looking at Skyscanner or Google, or Expedia, you're gonna see the amount of CO2 associated with your flight options. Uh, and we've managed to put those flat CO2 options in front of more than 130 billion searches to date.

So the scale that is possible with this coalition is a huge success, and now we're hoping to follow that with accommodation and rail, and, you know, the other information that folks need to make better decisions, regardless of which level.

If you've searched for a flight in the past 2 or 3 years, you've seen the column displaying CO2 emissions. For most travelers, cost and timing are still the deciding factors on which flight they choose. But even having sustainability information so readily available is a win!

Julie: So to change any system, or like a global system, you need a few things, right? So you need consistency, like a consistent understanding of the shared problems and the shared opportunities. You need a consistent language. And one of the ways to do that or to start in that direction is by having some data so that you can put facts on the table and say, you know, these things are all positive impacts of tourism and these things are negative impacts of tourism and we can't change what we can't measure, or, you know, we can't visualize or describe to someone and we can't do that without data.

 And so I think an important role that travelers play is we leverage the collective expertise of our coalition partners, um, and their reach to be able to collect that data at scale and then present it to, you know, folks that need to decide at a certain point, whether it's a traveler wanting to decide on.

How to fly or whether to take the train, or a business traveler making decisions on their itinerary, or whether it's policy makers or destination management organizations trying to set climate goals for themselves or biodiversity goals. It's very hard to do that without having information at your fingertips. There's, uh, a lot of fragmentation in our industry. There are so many different ways of describing things, measuring things, and presenting information, and so travelers rarely seek across this coalition that represents a huge chunk of information in the industry to try to harmonize and make sure that information is consistently collected, consistently displayed, so that it can be easily understood by whoever needs to use that information.

The more you know about the environmental impact of your trip, the more likely you are to make sustainable choices. Sharing and publicizing this information also keeps the airlines, accommodations, and tour providers in line.

Rodrigo: If we look at systemic change, things like what travelers are doing are very important in terms of bringing that awareness and also measuring the impacts and from. Uh, scientific data and, and, and scientific-driven goals, uh, so that we can align as an industry as a whole for, for, for what is the, the purpose that we have as an industry and, and where we have to get to.

But on the other side, on the flip side of that, there's also the grassroots initiatives, the things that come from communities. We'll have to meet in the middle with the top-down approach. So the work that we do is pretty much grassroots, so it's more about working with the stakeholders that are on the ground, those that are directly affected by either the climate emergency or that are affected by over-tourism or that.

On the flip side, they have the opportunities and they can do the most out of the, um, opportunities that tourism can bring to their communities. We work with several social enterprises that come from, uh, communities that are inpo in the process of social transformation and to regenerate their social fabric.

So tourism comes like a great partner for that effort because. It doesn't only. Provides their economic, uh, ways for them to be economically sustainable. But we have also discovered that this interaction between locals and travelers who are interested in learning and being inspired about their life history and how they have been able to change the course of a community, it's something that brings a huge amount of empowerment for the people who are doing, um, social change in local communities.

That peace process we talked about made a world of difference for many Colombians, but it also left some people out of traditional economic opportunities. Tourism has been able to fill some of those gaps!

Rodrigo: The year I was born, there were more than 130 terrorist attacks from the narcos against the civilian population. Uh, I can't imagine what it was like to be a newly, uh, a, a new father or a new mother bringing a son into these.

A terrible country. So my generation and I grew up in a country at war, and we were part of the transition. So I think there are a lot of people in my generation that is heavily invested in taking stakes in the peace. Uh, building of Colombia, and in our case, we have done it throughout tourism because there are many reasons why tourism is a great ally for peace. On the one hand, on the one hand is an industry that has very low entry barriers, so it can provide a lot of opportunities for people who let's. For example, former combatants or former gangsters who really have a strong will for change, but they find it very hard to find employment or jobs at any other industry while tourism is really welcoming for them because tourism can really, you don't need much to be able to, to create a tour, let's say in your neighborhood to share your story and make a living out of that.

So that's one thing. And the other thing is that tourism really can reach parts of the country where the government cannot reach. So the, let's say the popularity of tourism is, is amazing, and because travelers get to everywhere in the country, uh, where a lot of social programs don't even exist.

So tourism in some ways can also, uh. Fill some gaps in terms of opportunities, education, even in some remote parts of Colombia, like in the Amazon where we work, thanks to tourism, we're able to provide and to support communities, uh, with some basic healthcare that they wouldn't have otherwise. So I think this tourism has these two components that have made it.

Very important for peace building, which has low entry barriers and the capacity and reach it can have very deeply into the Colombian territories.

Picture the best trips and excursions you've ever been on! Maybe it was a white sand beach with traditional music playing, maybe it was a cooking class with an Italian nonna, or a hike through the woods with an expert guide. When you returned home, what did you tell your friends and family? Did you say "you've got to go!!" Your role as a tourist is to make sure the experiences you have are still there for others. It's pretty simple - just spend your money and listen to the experiences of local communities. 

Rodrigo: So, your question is about how we educate travelers and what the traveler’s role is in this whole equation? I think it's, it's very central, although it's very hard for us as a small travel company to change the consumer behavior and. Um, through something that has been widely studied, and it is that travelers, although they report having the intention of making more sustainable choices, the fact is that when it comes the time to making choices, they really prioritize, uh, their experience.

They prioritize their budget, and they put, um, further down in their list of priorities, how sustainable they choose their choices are. So what we think. It's important to start from there and to meet the travelers where they're at and never to start, uh, as a selling point to say, like, Hey, take your tours and help these communities and give back, and so on.

Because that sounds a bit like philanthropic or a bit like a kind of NGO oish, which, which we're not, we are a business, and these social enterprises are also businesses. So we always try to make sure that we are first and foremost, taking care of travelers’ experiences and making sure that they have a lot of fun.

That they see Colombia from a new perspective, that they eat amazing food, that they meet, uh, amazing people, uh, as opposed to promising them that their purchase, uh, decisions are gonna support local communities.

Learning about a place and a culture is the best part of travel!  But traveling also allows us to see some of the most glaring effects of climate change. Just last year, a picture went viral of a receding glacier in Switzerland. A man had taken a picture of himself in the same spot 15 years apart. In the first photograph, the glacier fills the entire background. In the second, the mountain and rock fill the frame with only a small piece of glacier left. 

Rodrigo says his guides share similar experiences in Colombia. 

Rodrigo: I think in Colombia we are at a very advantageous point for that because we are the second most diverse country on earth, and well, you know, Colombia, you lived here and you know how diverse, uh, ecosystems are. We have the coast on the Caribbean coast. We have coast on the Pacific Coast, and we have all the Andes.

So there's a country where you can find all kinds of ecosystems in one place. And thankfully, uh, a lot of these ecosystems are still very well preserved. So we like to showcase value diversity, uh, with our travelers. And something very important for us is two things. Number one. Do it with the local community that really depends on these ecosystems to thrive, and who are taking care of these ecosystems.

So, um, we do a lot of work with indigenous communities that have inevitable these areas for millennia and who have a very different understanding of what ecology means, uh, that a relationship they have with earth and with the resources, the way they hunt, the way they, uh, harbor, they, they work the nature.

Um, and I think it's being in contact with them and just to understand how they are in balance with their surroundings and their lifestyle, uh, is very simple, but at the same time, they have everything they need. I think it's an experience that for a lot of travelers is like a, is like a big discovery and a big learning experience about the importance of simplicity and also being in.

Tune in with your surroundings. The other thing is also about the guides that we work with. So the guides are a crucial part because they are not only the bridge between the travelers and the locals, but they also bridge the language gap most of the time. And they also help travelers to make sense of what they're seeing around, but they also. Make sure that the whole experience is very, um, it's educational for them. Uh, they make sure that whenever there are some traces, for example, in some of the destinations where we work, especially in the snow peaks, if we go to the high Andes. Uh, places like Vals National Park or Kui, you can see the effects of climate change.

You can see where the snow was getting up to just a couple of years back and how the snow has receded, and there's, every year, there's less snow. So it's, um, we have seen for travelers coming from countries or from contexts where the impacts of climate change are not visible, how it's, uh. It really hits them when they see something that is very clear, like right in front of their eyes.

So this whole conversation about how climate change has impacted the ecosystems and also what we can learn from indigenous communities and people who have inhabited inal with these ecosystems for millennia is great impact for the educational and hopefully that will support more and more consumers to make conscious, uh, life decisions. In the way they consume.

Travel is a growing industry. It's projected to top over a trillion US Dollars in annual revenue in the next few years. Given the size of the industry, small changes by both businesses and individuals could have a huge impact. 

Julie: So, you know, as you were talking about overt tourism, there are neighboring neighborhoods that are completely left out, you know, neighboring destinations that are not getting the redistribution of income that tourism brings globally. And so I think working with the trade in. Understand the opportunities for spreading the tourism impact, positive impact out to mitigate the negative impact, and also looking at fringe or low season travel so that not everyone is trying to travel at the same time.

Um, I think there's some amazing work that can be done on having folks travel um, perhaps less frequently, but for longer. To have more authentic and deeper, and more meaningful experiences. Um, certainly other parts of the industry need to be engaged. Uh, you know, there's great work we've done on aviation.

Fantastic work has been done by certification on accommodations. Um, new work recently on eventing and mice. But you know, there there's experiences, there's restaurants, there's sea travel, there's so much, there's so much work to be done and I think that it will take, um, the whole industry to try to make improvements on an ongoing basis for us to see, you know, these positive impact that we're hoping to see. Negative impacts or potential negative impacts.

The two major impact areas for tourism are sustainability and people. Local culture, communities, and environment should all benefit from tourism. And travelers will benefit too! So how do we get this right? 

One, add culture and climate to your research when you're planning a trip. 

Two, find local guides and local travel companies. Travalyst publishes a list of certifications you can look for, and yes, it includes B Lab Global. 

Once your trip has started, consider the impact of your choices on the climate and community wherever possible. It's likely to make your trip even better! 

For travel companies - get certifications! You can also utilize Travalyst’s certification directory. Share your data with nonprofits like Travalyst and see what small changes could make a big difference. The better we do now, the better everyone's experiences will be later. 

For more opportunities to engage with us, follow us on social media. 

This podcast was brought to you by B Lab. Special thanks to Sherri Jordan for coordination. Forces For Good is produced by Hueman Group Media. 

The views and opinions expressed are those of the interviewees and do not reflect the positions or opinions of the producers, affiliated organizations, or our funders.

I’m your host, Irving Chan-Gomez. Thanks for listening. And I look forward to catching you in the next episode!