The responsible travel criteria
- We do not claim to have addressed every single issue relating to responsible travel, 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 responsibletravel.com. You will find summaries of how they have achieved this, and their full responsible travel policies on the site. In addition, we require a short summary of the responsible travel aspects of every trip and form of accommodation on the site.
- Once accepted, our members may use the responsibletravel.com 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 responsibletravel.com, 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 criteria for responsibletravel.com here - responsibletravel.com 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 travel 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/accommodation gets critical RT comment (this needs to be a specific concern not just ‘I had to fly to get there, or ‘couldn’t see any benefits’) then we demand a response to publish. If we do not get a response then the trip/accommodation is removed until we do. If this response is not satisfactory then we remove the trip/accommodation altogether. If the response is OK but the trip/accommodation stays gets a second negative comment we review this in light of comments from other travellers. If there is not significant positive RT evidence from other reviewers then we remove the trip/accommodation from the site.
Member
As above on a trip by trip basis. If several of trips have received negative comments then we need to meet/talk to understand why and to seek assurances. If these assurances are satisfactory the member stays live. If the new reviews do not improve and span several trips then we issue a final warning. If the situation does not improve the member is removed.
