Responsible Travel
Walking the Talk
Geographic Expeditions is a proud founding member of the Adventure Collection, an alliance of ten of the world’s finest travel companies, committed to excellence, personal service, innovation, and enriching travel experiences around the world. Adventure Collection members actively embrace the following mission statement:
The Adventure Collection is committed to the cultural and environmental well-being of the places we visit. We follow scientifically supported on-the-ground and at-sea minimum-impact practices. We seek to create inspirational experiences for our travelers, and we partner with a wide array of nonprofit organizations that further these objectives.
Of course, it’s easy to say that we’re dedicated to conservation, eco-friendliness, fighting climate change, etc. The reality is more complicated and demanding, and we’re the first to acknowledge that bringing travelers to remote and not-so-remote places inevitably has local and global environmental and cultural impacts. But—and this is something to which we devote continual thought— we believe fervently that our trips provide meaningful and important ways for local communities and governments to create sustainable forms of development, which in turn relieves pressure on resources. Our more-than-a-quarter-of-a-century of experience has taught us that, when it’s intelligently done, travel is a net plus for the visitor and the visited alike.
Here are the major ways GeoEx enthusiastically puts into practice the strategic principles we developed with our Adventure Collection colleagues.
Accountability in the Communities Where Our Offices Are Located
We’re big believers in walking the talk at home in order to be effective advocates for change abroad. GeoEx’s San Francisco office is located in the beautiful Presidio’s Thoreau Center for Sustainability. The Thoreau Center represents the cutting edge in sustainable architecture, recycling, energy conservation, volunteering, and public transportation. GeoEx also has a finely tuned direct-marketing program aimed at reducing the amount of unwanted and undelivered mail, and whenever possible, we print with soy inks and UV coatings on tree-free paper or high-quality recycled stock supplied by companies certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.
Accountability in the Field
GeoEx works diligently with conservation organizations and our partners in the field to develop practices that minimize our footprint and generate meaningful contributions to local economies. We’re mindful that our partners may have different conservation perspectives, and taking those into careful consideration, we work with local people in developing itineraries and routes; in selecting hotels, boats, and other transportation; in choosing informed local guides; in educating our travelers about local conditions and customs; and in adhering to minimum-impact standards for all our tours, treks, and voyages. Additionally, we partner with a variety of organizations to share best practices. (For example, in 2007 we worked with Conservation International to develop an international tour operator “best practices”
manual for travel to mountain areas.)
Giving Back
GeoEx supports a broad array of conservation, cultural resource protection, education, and health care organizations, including the Central Asian Institute, the Snow Leopard Trust, the American Himalayan Foundation, the Solar Electric Light Fund, and the Trust for Public Land.
Beginning in 2008, GeoEx will ratchet up our commitment to this somewhat beleaguered planet by pledging 1 percent of our net annual tour sales (as opposed to profits) to alternative energy technologies administered by the Climate Trust (www.climatetrust.org) as a way of offsetting the carbon footprint of our office, our marketing, and our trips. And we will make a wide array of conservation, cultural resource protection, education, and health care grants to nonprofit initiatives in the areas we’re so privileged to visit.
Giving Back: Your Opportunity
The mantra is important and familiar: Keep abreast of global developments in conservation and sustainability. Act locally (and consistently). Cut down on waste, reuse, recycle, rethink priorities. Walk, run, bike, use public transportation, join a car pool. Put your talents to use with organizations trying to get the world on the right track. Vote. Think. Enjoy the world with loving care.
In 2008 GeoEx will also provide all its travelers who contribute $250 or more to the Living Planet Trust (a donor-directed fund administered by the Tides Foundation of San Francisco) with a $250 travel voucher toward a future trip. These tax-deductible donations to the Living Planet Trust will be dedicated to offset the carbon emissions generated by our travelers’
international air passage and to fund local initiatives in the destination the traveler just experienced.
The Bottom Line
Jan Morris said it for us: “If you love something hotly enough, consciously, with care, it becomes yours by symbiosis, irrevocably.” The key word is care. And with love and care comes responsibility. We, like so many of our caring travelers, are dedicated to living up to our responsibilities to the places that have touched, inspired, and given us so much joy.
