A Better Approach to Building a Sustainable Tourism Company
Photo Credit: A hiker in Svalbard, Norway. Facebook / Basecamp Explorer
Skift Take
Sustainable tourism, while looking nice on paper, is still extremely difficult to execute making Basecamp's approach to integrate a business and non-profit is one worth examining.
Sustainable tourism, or the concept that travelers can protect and celebrate a culture while also enjoying it, is harder than it sounds.
Just ask any company that's attempted to build a travel company that meets the demands of running a business while attempting to consciously support a community.
Tourism company Basecamp Explorer solved its inner conflict between running a successful business and contributing to the communities where it operates by setting up non-profit Basecamp Foundation. The two organizations are run separately but directly impact one another's operations -- so much so that the foundation owns 40 percent of the company, providing the capital it needs to survive.
Basecamp Explorer started its operations in Kenya and has since expanded to France and Norway, but its coordination with its brother foundation in Maasai Mara contains enlightening lessons for other tourism companies hopi
