What Does the Guide Help You Do?

Our Tourism Cares Guide to Meaningful Travel Product helps travel companies make more responsible choices when building travel product. Tourism is a powerful tool that, when designed properly, can help alleviate some of the world’s biggest problems like social inequality, food sovereignty, and conserving environmental and cultural assets. The Guide can help travel professionals and businesses reflect on these connections and then make changes to their product to improve the positive impact of travel.

There is extensive evidence that global travelers want more sustainable travel options, want tourism revenue to boost the local economy, and that they are yearning for authentic, unique experiences that help them connect with a destination on a deeper level. The Guide can help product developers meet these needs by designing these elements into their tours.

With this guide in hand, product designers learn how to generate economic benefits for local people, enhance well-being in destinations, and create engaging and innovative experiences for travelers who want to form a deeper connection with the people they meet when traveling.

Why: The Business Case for Adding Meaningful Travel Product

Differentiate your product from competitors while showing your commitment to the future of the industry

Offer authentic experiences, demanded by travelers

Meaningful experiences often don’t cost more, especially if you swap with existing elements

Purposeful brands are favored in the marketplace

Booking.com 2021 Sustainable Travel Report survey results (29,000 travelers in 30 countries) show:

72% think travel companies should offer more sustainable choices

76% want to ensure the economic impact of the industry is spread equally in all levels of society

73% want to have authentic experiences that are representative of local culture when they travel

How: A Step-by-Step Guide to Adding Meaningful Travel Product

The Guide shows you how to answer these questions:

Create a strategy

Use the UN Sustainable Development Goals as a guideline. What issues does your organization care about what do those issues look like in practice within travel product?

What does your customer base look like and what are some examples of meaningful product that might be relevant to them, based on their values and characteristics?

What are the different aspects of your supply chain that might be swapped for more impactful product?

Source Product Opportunities

What is the best fit within your product for meaningful experiences?

What questions should you ask and how do you research this type of product offering?

How should you work with meaningful businesses and non-profits?

Evaluate Meaningful Experiences

What are the types of social, economic and environmental issues that organizations address, why are these important, and how do they relate to the UN SDGs?

Work with New Suppliers, Implementation, and Evaluate Success

How will you measure success for your business and for the local community?