Making a positive impact with tourism & supporting locally-owned businesses

The United Nations Environment Program reports that in a typical mass tourism package, of each USD 100 spent by a tourist from a developed country, as little as USD 5 actually stays in a developing destination’s economy.

Why’s that important?

Too often when all your money goes to airlines, international hotel chains, tour operators and other international suppliers in the country you live in, tourism becomes a curse – concreting the landscape, displacing local people, gobbling up resources, then moving on somewhere else when it’s all ruined. Local people are then left to pick up the pieces of the crumbling buildings lining the seafront.

Tourism has the power to make a positive impact. I believe travel bloggers/influencers have the responsibility to motivate travellers to be more conscious. It’s essential to make a change now if we want a  future for the tourism industry & want to keep the world the amazing, inspiring place it is.

It’s beautifully simple:

1 – I want to promote & empower 100% locally-owned and run businesses to make a great living doing what they love – sharing the best spots to ride, climb, surf or ski in the world’s most inspiring natural landscapes.

2 – By growing the numbers of people booking holidays with local businesses in these adventure hot-spots, more money flows into the local economy.

3 – This creates a virtuous circle with local communities and governments empowered and incentivised to protect and conserve the amazing environments which attracted these visitors in the first place.

Find out more: UNWTO global report on adventure tourism