According to a booking.com survey, more than ever before, travellers seak for sustainable and eco-friendly ways to travel. They are willing to pay additional charges to keep their carbon footprint small, and support local businesses and accomodation owners. So, how do we as a start-up in the travel industry deal with increasing demands for green travels?

We are not a Travel Agency

Let’s make one thing clear — Tourisfair is not a travel agency. However, offering services to travellers and being part of the tourism sector leads to just as much responsibility when it comes to sustainability.
Letting us plan your trip by recommending fitting activities in each and every destination is one side of our business. On the other side of the spectrum are for example all the city trip activities that ensure you’re having the time of your life and an unforgettable experience in any wherever you are, and you as the traveller have ultimately contributed to a sustainable cycle.

The booking.com survey also revealed what made travellers rethink their travel habits.

• Having seen the beauty of coral reefs and rainforests (60%)
• Having seen the impact of tourism on the location they visited (54%)
• Having seen the positive effects that sustainable tourism can have on the local population (47%)
• Having seen what effect unsustainable tourism has on the country (42%)

What about animals?

The two main reasons an animal species becomes endangered, or is threatened by extinction are a loss of habitat and a loss of genetic variation.
And believe it or nor, the tourism industry is not innocent either. Especially mass tourist hotspots interfere with most animal’s terrains, which forces them to wander off.
We are aware of this sad fact and won’t sugar coat anything. So how can we as part of the travel industry, service provider for trips, and animal lover do good and compensate for envirionmental damage caused by the industry?
We decided to adopt.

Partnerships for Endangered Species

Every single one of us should have a different approach on living a more sustainable life style. Changes in travel habits could be avoiding short distance flights, light packing, never support and participate in tourist attractions involving touching, riding on, or photo sessions with wild animals, taking your own bags and eco-friendly bottles with you, offset your CO2-emmissions, and so on.
During the peak of the pandemic, we brainstormed on how we as a start-up and team could virtually contribute to the environment. It was important to us, that our donations are trackable and that we could actually receive regular information on the current circumstances.
Virtual partnerships for animals are nothing new, but our plan was to make our new family member come to life by digitally illustrating and implementing them into our branding, so our community could get in touch with them and in future, even receive travel plans made by them.

Why is it a Panda?

We then initiated a poll to find out which of the animals our community would choose for us to adopt and the mojority placed their votes for the Giant Panda.
Soon after making the initial decision to adopt, we more or less coincidentally discovered something within our logo.
When viewed sideways, the destination icons appeared to look just like eyes — not any eyes. The very distinctive eyes only one specific animal is known for, even without seeing other body parts — the panda.
But discovering the logo’s similarity with panda eyes and our community voting for the panda cannot entirely be a coincidence.

We are currently running community surveys on our social media channels, on which of the 16 adoptable pandas we should bring our adoption application foward. The survey runs until March 31st, and we will keep you updated. Find out more about the process here.

How Tourisfair associated Eco-Tourism with an Adoption was originally published in Pandi English on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.