Ever been woken by a howler monkey’s mating roar? The louder the long-tailed swingers are, the lesser their other endowments, apparently. At Kura’s adults-only perch on Costa Rica’s Pacific coast, step from bed to open-air lounge and you’ll spy these polygynous primates bouncing through the rainforest canopy. It’s like CGI. This six-suite Cayuga Collection hotel in this green energy-powered nation promises high-drama panoramas with every blue sky, hazy ocean horizon cliché. No surprise then, that at breakfast my view included a bikini- clad beauty posing for her lover in the saltwater infinity pool. I can confidently call the Instagram husband in his budgie smugglers her lover. There are only six stilted bungalows here in the jungle, and they were my neighbours. It later dawned on me that the source of my sunrise wake-up call might not have been the monkeys.
Why am I telling you this? Because — key change! — things are heating up. September and October walloped the world with the warmest temperatures on record. Heatwaves across Europe this summer triggered wildfires one day, while torrential floods threatened life elsewhere the next. It’s impossible to ignore the climate chaos. It’s a sign we urgently need to adapt our travels. So, today we’re launching the New Standard for Sustainable Travel. We’re spreading the love for holidays and hotels with a passion for saving the planet. That means hotels like the Cayuga Collection property in Uvita, where energy, waste and water are all monitored and measured, as part of an enormous number of innovations designed to help it tick more responsibly.
You might be surprised to hear that such a luxurious place to stay would be so committed to such things, but today sustainability is no longer a niche concern for the tourism industry. Google searches for “sustainable travel” are rocketing, with the platform making it easier to find more eco-friendly hotels, lower-emissions flights and train tickets. Intrepid Travel and Responsible Travel have started publishing carbon labels on itineraries. Green leafs are appearing everywhere from Booking.com to easyJet Holidays which denote more sustainable options. Multi-national hotel groups such as IHG have announced firm commitments to lowering their carbon footprint, and entire countries have gone green. Earlier this year saw Singapore become the world’s first Global Sustainable Tourism Council-approved sustainable tourism destination. “When I first arrived in Costa Rica, straight from Cornell University’s hotel school, people would look at me strangely when I talked about sustainability,” says Hans Pfister, CEO and founder of Cayuga Collection. “Now we see lots of hotels wanting to copy our sustainability programmes.”
That’s not to say that the journey is complete. Many businesses — and travellers — still need to be convinced. That’s why our new initiative, which you can find at standard.co.uk/sustainable-travel, will provide a one-stop shop to educate and inspire. We’ll explain how choosing the right trips from a sector estimated to be worth almost $10 trillion (according to the World Travel & Tourism Council), can be more beneficial to the bigger picture. And how to tell the difference between a provider that really cares and one just talking the walk. A jargon-busting guide explains what those buzzwords actually mean. And we’ll show you why ‘responsible’ or ‘regenerative’ holidays — which don’t necessarily sound like a barrel of laughs — can deliver exactly what we all look for when we book a trip: care-free fun in fantastic places.
When it comes to how we wander, there’s a new world of eco out there: from Costa Rica to California to, well, Croydon. Bravo, Birch Selsdon! Rewilding 200 acres of thirsty golfing greens, just south of the capital, this new hotel sets an impressive new benchmark. Indeed, it’s proof you don’t need to be flying to Central America for such escapes — or indeed flying at all. Plan flight-free family escapes or work-on-the-train business trips in Europe, as navigated by Green Traveller’s Richard Hammond. Get a taste for zero-miles foraged menus at the new Wilding Kitchen at the nature-positive Knepp Estate in Sussex. Or plump for a great-value package holiday which funds charity work, such as through the TreadRight Foundation. When it comes to being greener we’ve looked beyond the off-grid drop-toilet basics. Although Canopy & Stars gives some great reasons to give those a go too.
That’s not all. This Saturday, tune into the first of a new, six-part Sustainable Travel podcast series. Along with audio journalist Jon Weeks, we’ve enlisted experts such as UCL’s Mark Maslin to unpack what it means to book more climate-conscious holidays. These podcast episodes about eco-friendlier explorations will inspire whether you’re new to sustainability or a long-time eco-warrior, have bucket-list ambitions, or are keen to keep to a budget.
At this point, you might ask why we’re recommending flying at all. Of course, we can’t ignore the greenhouse-gas emissions heating up our atmosphere from air travel. But lots of us love to — and are going to — travel. So, we’d like to show you how, when done in the right way, travel can have a hugely positive impact. Tourism is a massive employer in less-developed lands — it funnels funds from those who have money to those needing it most. One in 10 people is employed in this sector, according to the WTTC, and that’s on the rise. Take the safaris in Africa, which are working hard to save wildlife species, or the forests and woodlands being protected and restored thanks to nature-based tours that fund NGOs like Rewilding Britain or The European Nature Trust. Our cash injections can help the local communities, including Indigenous people in all corners of the world, linked to these projects to survive and thrive. And that’s a very good thing.
Of course, it’s not all about altruism. We also want you to travel better, because we’re confident you’ll also enjoy it more. Psychologists tell us we get neurochemical highs just from the anticipation of a trip. At the same time, a 20-year study by Dr Thomas Gilovich of Cornell University showed that the satisfaction we get from our travels lasts infinitely longer than the kick we get from buying stuff. So if we can spark even more of those happy hormones and extend that ‘holiday feeling’ to the max with brilliant advice that also helps assuage your eco guilt, then it’s a win-win.
Welcome to a more rewarding way of travelling — for everyone.
