The responsible travel criteria

We do not claim to have addressed every single issue relating to responsible tourism, as these are both complex and variable in each destination. Rather, we have created a way for the industry and tourists to work openly together to improve tourism for travellers and local communities.
All industry members have been screened to meet the required environmental, social and economic criteria for joining our site. You will find summaries of how they have achieved this, and their full responsible tourism policies on the site. In addition, we require a short summary of the responsible tourism aspects of every trip and form of accommodation on the site.
Once accepted, our members may use our logo in their marketing and promotion - but only in association with specific trips or accommodation that have met the minimum criteria. For some members, the minimum criteria have been met for all their trips, for others this applies to only a select number.
Once members have met the minimum criteria for joining our site, they may continue to add to or improve on these criteria as applied to their own products and services. This helps to differentiate individual members and enables them to pursue future change and improvement as appropriate.

Review the required responsible tourism criteria for becoming a member here

Our website is unique in that it encourages a dialogue between travellers and suppliers, providing a framework for travellers to comment on tour operators' and accommodation owners' stated practices. With our members' permission, we independently contact travellers who have experienced members' trips or accommodation, and then publish their feedback on the site - warts and all - to help inform future travellers and enable our members to assess and improve their products.
We do not expect travellers to be responsible tourism experts and simply ask them to confirm whether specific activities that our members claim to have undertaken (such as providing travellers with advice on minimising negative cultural impacts) have been completed.
Members who are found to have consistently misrepresented their practices will be removed from the site. Our process for managing this is as follows -
- Trip or accommodation: If a trip or accommodation receives a review that criticises the responsible tourism aspects of that holiday (with a specific concern rather than comments about the impact of flying) then we contact the tour operator or accommodation owner to discuss the issues raised. We then ask the operator to respond to the review to address the problem. If we do not get a response in a timely manner, we remove the holiday until we do. If this response is not satisfactory then we remove the holiday from the site altogether. If we feel the operator’s response addresses the issues raised we will continue to promote the holiday but will carefully monitor all future feedback in case the issue arises again. If future reviews show that the problem has not been addressed properly then we will remove the holiday from the site.
- Member: Tour operators and accommodation owners are also monitored via the reviews process. If a tour operator receives several reviews with negative comments for various trips then we contact them to discuss the issues raised, how to prevent these issues arising again and seek assurance that steps will be in place to improve the holidays. If these assurances are satisfactory we continue to work with the member. However, if the new reviews we receive do not show improvement and span several trips then we issue a final warning and if the situation does not improve the member is removed from the site.