The Ethical Travel Guide



The Ethical Travel Guide is much more than an innovative and stimulating guide to some of the most exciting holiday experiences around. It is key tool in Tourism Concerns fight to ensure that local people always benefit from tourism.

Thousands of grass roots, low impact, high sustainability initiatives all over the world struggle to tell tourists they exist. Very few of these inspirational initiatives have the resources or skills to market themselves within an industry dominated by multinational companies. The Ethical Travel Guide is a challenge to the stranglehold that western based companies from the wealthier nations have over the distribution networks of the tourism industry.

It is a chance for struggling communities and dedicated local entrepreneurs to talk to their customers, to promote a more authentic and local experience which they are uniquely able to provide. And the market is lapping it up. The book went to reprint within a month of publication and has already been translated in to Dutch and Italian.

The Ethical Travel Guide lists 300 places in over 60 countries, many of which will not be found in conventional guidebooks. Entries include places to stay, organisations, trips, tours and projects, from canoeing the backwaters of the Amazon to luxury breaks in the Indian Ocean. You can stay in very simple, local style accommodation or more sophisticated hotels with western plumbing. But they all have one thing in common. They all support the local economy, bringing much needed wealth to communities. It is a tribute to enterprising people all over the world and a fulfilment of Tourism Concern’s commitment to ensure that people in all destinations benefit from tourism.

This unique and ground breaking marketing tool has a hard hitting introduction by Polly Patullo, journalist and travel writer, highlighting many of the issues, such as displacement of local people, poverty, cultural erosion and environmental degradation that most tourists are unaware of. So while it provides holiday makers with fantastic ideas for authentic and guilt free holidays, it also raises awareness of the impacts of tourism with a public that is starting to pay attention to their impacts on the world.

Read how one community has benefited from the Ethical Travel Guide

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