One resolution you won’t regret making for 2024? Trying to be a more responsible traveller, through reducing your carbon footprint, giving back to the communities you visit and spending your hard-earned dollars where it truly helps. Here are five ways to travel thoughtfully in the year ahead.
With its sizable carbon footprint, cruising has long been considered the antithesis of sustainability, but some companies are striving to lessen its environmental impact.
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Departing March 2024 and 2025, Coral Expeditions’ 10-night Citizen Science Cruise will take up to 70 passengers from Brisbane to Cairns, Australia, to support the ongoing conservation of the Great Barrier Reef. Working alongside marine biologists, the guests’ activities will include conducting reef health surveys and volunteering at a turtle rehabilitation centre.
Closer to home in Canada, Maple Leaf Adventures’ vessels — including a catamaran, a classic tugboat and a century-old schooner — take small groups on low-impact sailings. Guests on the seven-night Desolation Sound & Fjords of BC itinerary in October 2024 will assist humpback whale researchers who were featured in BBC’s “Planet Earth III” series.
Madrid Atocha, the city’s major train station. Trading short flights for rail is one way to lower your carbon impact.
Diego Corona / Unsplash
Go low and slow
It’s estimated that tourism produces about eight per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. That’s why in 2024, small-group tour operator Intrepid Travel is removing 18 short-haul flights across 14 of its trips — the equivalent of 4,000 passenger flights — and introducing new lower-carbon itineraries.
For example, on Intrepid’s soon-to-launch, 10-day Real Borneo tour through the Sabah region — where the endemic species include orangutans, elephants and bears — visitors will travel by van, while the eight-day Paris-to-Madrid by Rail trip will rely exclusively on public transport (primarily train travel). In addition, more than 500 Intrepid departures now include carbon labelling, so you can better understand a trip’s impact.
Respectful travel to Maui’s accessible areas is now welcomed and can help the destination’s economic recovery.
Pascal Debrunner / Unsplash
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Support a community in recovery
After a natural disaster strikes, an impactful way to support a community’s economic recovery is to visit when it’s ready to welcome travellers again. That’s the case in Maui, where visitor arrivals dropped by three-quarters following wildfires in August 2023, resulting in a loss of $13 million (U.S.) per day in the weeks following the devastation.
Respectful travel to Maui’s accessible areas is now welcomed, with accommodations reopening in phases over recent months. (Visit gohawaii.com/islands/maui for updates from the Hawai’i Tourism Authority.) Guests can help give back by booking the “Return to Maui” package offered at hotels like the Sheraton Maui Resort & Spa and the Wailea Beach Resort, which donates $100 (U.S.) of their stay toward relief funds.
Travellers can also volunteer their time with local organizations through the Malama Hawai’i Program (Malama translates to “give back”). Activities include helping to remove invasive plants, maintain taro patches or participate in beach cleanups.
Wilderness Travel’s giraffe-tracking trip in Namibia allows travellers to help conservation scientists.
Dreamstime
Contribute to wildlife conservation
Say goodbye to the days of riding elephants, petting tigers and otherwise treating wildlife like tourism attractions. Opportunities to get up close to threatened species can be focused on conservation instead.
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In 2024, family-owned tour operator Wilderness Travel will introduce a suite of safaris in Namibia that allow travellers to get involved in field research. On this summer’s 13-day Giraffe Conservation Safari, for example, guests will help scientists track and GPS-tag wild giraffes (considered both ecologically and culturally significant), as well as track leopards with the AfriCat Foundation and black rhinos with rangers from Save the Rhino Trust.
At Métis Crossing in Alberta, you can learn about Indigenous culture and sleep under northern lights.
Indigenous Tourism Alberta
Connect with culture
At its best, travel has the power to build connections across cultures and foster empathy and understanding. In Canada, one of the best ways to experience its transformative power is by taking part in an Indigenous-led tourism experience.
Kicking off this winter is the new Whisper from the Stars program at Métis Crossing, a cultural interpretive centre about a 90-minute drive from Edmonton. Guided by an Elder, visitors will learn how Métis people used the stars to navigate and understand when to hunt and work the land. Then, at night, you can drift to sleep under the dancing northern lights in the site’s Sky Watching Domes.
Another noteworthy accommodation is Pêmiska Tourism’s tipi-inspired lodges, opening in spring 2024, about 45 minutes north of Saskatoon in Fort Carlton Provincial Park. The historic site regularly hosts Indigenous markets and activities, such as bannock-making over a fire with Nehiyaw storytellers and historians.
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