Responsible Travel: How to Create an Impactful Journey

TL;DR Creating intentional travel experiences for women, Christine Winebrenner Irick, founder of Lotus Sojourns, has found that understanding her values and carrying those into her business has allowed her to craft experiences women really resonate with, and allows her to combine her passions for responsible tourism and transformative travel into journeys that are as good for the soul as they are for the destination.

Beginning a Responsible Travel Journey

I have been dreaming of launching a travel company since I was 19 or 20, and my concept of what it would be has evolved with me over the years. Two years ago I decided that now is that “someday.” As I began diving into the work of creating what would eventually become Lotus Sojourns, there was one thing I knew would be non-negotiable; my company would embrace important values I had been introduced to during the 20 years I had been working in different areas of the tourism industry. I had strongly resonated with the fundamentals of responsible tourism and knew I would create a company that would be aligned with these fundamentals while creating an authentic connection between travelers and destinations.

What is Responsible Tourism?

When I start conversations around my passion for responsible tourism and try to explain what on earth my degree in Sustainable Destination Management could possibly be, I often find myself defining terms. My definition of responsible tourism is tourism that creates minimal negative impact environmentally or culturally. As I lead travelers on more intentional journeys, I’ve seen we are contributing to positive financial and environmental impacts.  

How to Travel in Alignment With Your Values

Knowing my personal values and letting those shape my company values has helped me to set my intentions and guide my decisions. I encourage travelers to connect to their personal values and see how these relate to their travel experiences. There are many types of responsible travel but I focus on the areas of tourism that resonate with my values — adventure tourism, eco-tourism, educational tourism, volunteerism or philanthropic travel, transformational travel — and then look at them through the lens of intentionality.

People who travel with these focuses in mind are all being more intentional about the type of experience they want to have and therefore, they interact with people and place in a more impactful way. As someone who loves hiking and connecting with nature as well as learning from Indigenous cultures, it is easier for me to see the need to consider how my travel impacts a destination. 

How to Create a Responsible Travel Experience

When I plan a travel experience, I start by collaborating with small, locally-based organizations to ensure we are supporting as many local hotels, tour guides, restaurants, and artisans as possible. This gives you, as a traveler, rich authentic engagement with the destination. You might find yourself slumbering in a seaside mansion converted into a boutique hotel, chatting fireside at a mountaintop lodge run by a local anthropologist, or sharing a meal with a woman who runs a community cooperative making fair trade jewelry. Responsible tourism not only supports local communities, but this type of experience is infinitely more powerful because this step away from a familiar chain hotel or restaurant is where your transformational journey really begins. It is in this space where you start to know yourself as someone who can be immersed in a new environment, navigate the unknown, and grow along the way.

Packing Consciously

When I am working with travelers preparing for a trip, we usually land on the topic of packing. When I give my packing guide we might find ourselves talking about things we need specific to this journey and begin a conversation about being conscious consumers and how to make purchases more responsibly. I always travel with a scarf; it is versatile and easy to pack and offers both warmth and protection from the sun or bugs, can be a quick fashionable accessory, or adapt my outfit to be more culturally appropriate by covering exposed skin. I love to choose items made by women in artisan groups I’ve visited or products I can purchase that support fair trade and women-owned businesses around the world. 

The Impacts of Responsible Travel

When we are intentional about travel it can offer us the opportunity to examine all aspects of our experiences, from what we pack and where those items are sourced, to where we stay, what we eat, and the activities we participate in along the way. Each layer is a place where we can be intentional and create an impact. I know personally, it can be overwhelming to set out to travel with the intention of good, but when you break it down into these components of our experience I believe there are very simple changes that each of us can incorporate. I also ask my travelers to honor my commitment to eliminate single-use plastics during their trip and bring a reusable water bottle or water purifying bottle, cloth shopping bags, as well as reusable glass or metal straws or utensils.

It is incredibly exciting to see all of the companies that are values-based becoming more popular in the consumer market today and I am grateful for companies like Made Trade that actually encourage people to know their values and allow their customers to shop accordingly. Shopping this way is a great introduction to being more intentional in our daily lives. Developing these habits in this way makes them easier to carry into experiences like travel, which removes us from our routine, and instead of being an excuse to dismiss those values becomes an opportunity to engage more fully and take action in alignment with these values.

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