What is Detour doing to promote Sustainable Travel?

Detour is committed to promoting sustainable travel and ecotourism and to helping tourism reach its potential to make the world a better place. Detour’s business model is based on principles of sustainable tourism and fair trade: We only sell trips operated by locally owned companies that are committed to sustainable tourism.

By traveling with local companies your tourism dollars go directly into the local economy, guaranteeing that local people benefit from the intrusion of tourism. We only work with companies that reinvest in the local communities where they run trips, and that follow strong environmental practices. When you purchase a packaged trip from a foreign-owned company, such as a travel company based in the USA, as little as 5%-20% of the trip cost may actually make it into the local economy, where it can provide jobs, alleviate poverty, and provide incentives to protection of environmental and cultural resources.

In 2007 Detour became a partner with the Rainforest Alliance to promote sustainable tourism in Latin America. We have agreed to work with as many local companies who are green certified (or who have signed a document committing them to Best Management Practices) as possible, and to encourage all of our other supplier companies to become green certified.

Read more about Sustainable Travel and Sustainable Tourism