When it comes to ethical tourism, the importance of choosing experiences carefully cannot be overstated. As travelers, we have a responsibility to ensure that our adventures do not contribute to the exploitation of communities, nature, and wildlife. We’ve put this article together as a resource for those interested in making responsible travel choices, but don’t necessarily know where to start or key pointers to look for.

What makes an experience ethical?

Ethical experiences are those that prioritize the welfare of those they operate around: communities, wildlife, habitats, nature. This means avoiding activities that exploit animals for entertainment, such as riding elephants or visiting zoos that do not adhere to animal welfare standards. Instead, ethical wildlife tourism focuses on sustainable practices that benefit both the animals and the local communities.

Ok, so what’s responsible travel?

Responsible travel is about making choices that minimize our impact on the environment and support local economies. By choosing ethical wildlife experiences, we contribute to wildlife conservation efforts and promote sustainable tourism. This not only helps protect endangered species but also ensures that future generations can enjoy the beauty of nature.

Responsible travel also means understanding that not everything falls into binary categories of ‘ethical’ vs ‘unethical’, as this comes at the risk of ignoring the infrastructure available in some destinations to produce experiences that we’d define as perfectly ethical. At Plotpackers, we really take this kind of context into account and place a heavy focus on championing experiences that demonstrate real progress in ethical wildlife experiences in the region, even if they aren’t totally perfect, because this kind of support ultimately enables those iniatives to progress further in the right direction. In this way, you’re making a responsible travel decision to leave a positive impact in the places and communities you travel through.

So how do I know the difference between responsible travel and greenwashing?

This is where it can get tricky, because if you ask any tour provider, hotel, or guide, every single person will try to convince you that their experience is ethical, responsible, and sustainable.

When Plotpackers first started up, we had to figure out how to filter out the greenwashers to ensure we set up a supply chain we could be confident in. This includes rigorous screenings, interviews, certification checks and site visits. While you can’t possibly do that when you’re planning your own holiday, we’ve constructed a shorter test you could conduct over message:

First, ask the basic question: “is this sustainable”?

Why? Use the biggest buzzword of all, and see where that gets you. You want to see people diving into examples of what they do to be sustainable, and you want to identify red flags in more basic, mirrored responses like “Yes, we are”, “we care about sustainability”, etc.

Next, dive deeper. Ask what their plans are to improve operations to make things more sustainable in the future.
Here, you’ll want to see them tell you a little about their plans, because no single travel operator is perfect. And the key to identifying a genuinely ethical operator is in finding the ones who know they aren’t perfect, and know what they have to do to improve.

At this stage, you should have a good idea of whether or not the conversation should go any further. While it’s not exhaustive, it is a step in the right direction, which is what we’re all about at Plotpackers.

If you’d like to check out any of our tours by clicking here, you can be assured that they have all been rigorously vetted to meet our ethical experience standards. We hope this was useful!