Travel & The Future Of The World

Travel has so many benefits for each of us as individuals:

• It makes it possible for us to find a warm place to relax when it's cold at home
• It makes it possible for us to do inumerable things that we love to do but can't do at home, like ski, snow-board, swim in the sea, snorkel, skuba dive, see wild animals, watch birds.......
• It excites and inspires us with amazing sights, sounds and smells
• It introduces us to different people and different ways of life and helps us to understand that we are all fundamentally the same
• It gives us the opportunity to find out about the history of different places and people.

We could go on and on...

And travel is also important to the world as a whole because:

• It fosters understanding between people from different places
• It spreads income from richer to poorer nations and parts of the world, not through charity or hand-outs but through fair exchange of value
• It helps to finance incredibly important biodiversity conservation initiatives that cannot practically be funded in any other way. In particular the conservation of wildlife in Africa is absolutely dependent on tourist spending to ensure that mass extinsions of iconic species do not occurr - imagine the world without rhinos, elephants or lions!

Sustainable Travel

But, like most things, travel must be managed sensitively and sensibly so that it does not damage what it shoud protect. Promoting this concept and working to ensure that travel is supportive, sensitive, sustainable and responsible is the function of our partner, the Travel Foundation. As a partner of the Travel Foundation we strive to work with tour operators who uphold their values and support their causes.

Global Warming

Most notably, travel contributes 8% to global carbon emissions, and it is an easy target for people wanting to find eurocentric ways to score points in the incredibly important debate about how to secure the future of the world.

It would be extremely damaging to the world's eco-systems and to the communities of the poorest countries if we stopped travelling in order to reduce carbon emissions. Instead we can offset those emissions by sensible programmes like those undertaken by our partner, Trees4Travel.

We aspire to offset the whole carbon footprint of our business and of all the holidays that we sell. We prefer to work with tour operators that do the same, but whatever holiday you buy through us, please talk to us about making sure that your holiday will do no nett damage to the climate, as well as making a positive contribution to the part of the world that you visit.