Our Responsible Business Policy
Responsible Travel
Here at Wild Frontiers we have our own dedicated in-house Responsible Travel Team, which meets regularly to review and measure our responsible travel policies. This is not only crucial to help ensure best practice across both our group tour and tailor-made holiday itineraries, but the ideal forum to develop new ideas and initiatives.
We guarantee that when designing our tours, we utilise our own experiences to break down barriers, and provide ethical business for those lesser-known areas that have so much to offer. We pride ourselves on challenging perceptions and raising awareness through low impact experiences and responsible tourism.
Our guiding principle is to both create and operate tours that have a positive and sustainable social, economic and environmental impact.
Our Guiding Principles
- We keep our group tour sizes small. While our average group size is nine, the majority of our trips have a maximum group size of 12. Please refer to individual itineraries for details
- We have both a strict environmental Leave No Trace policy, to ensure that the habitats we visit are not damaged or spoilt from our presence, as well as a Wildlife policy to protect the wellbeing of all wildlife
- We have our own water policy and are working to help reduce single use plastic while travelling. Read more about our policy and campaign
- As a part of our climate action commitment, we have partnered with environmental social enterprise, Ecologi, to plant trees and fund carbon reduction projects on behalf of all clients that travel with us. Through our partnership, we are contributing to renewable energy and preservation projects in destinations we visit to help offset the carbon emissions generated from our group tours and tailor-made trips, as well as planting ten trees for every person that we take on holiday. Using Ecologi's transparent platform, the volume of carbon emissions offset, the projects supported and number of trees planted are all recorded
- We aim to ensure that the tourism we bring is beneficial, appropriate and fair to local communities and their infrastructures. We achieve this through working alongside local people to generate employment and business opportunities, stimulate investment and entrepreneurial activity and ensure maximum revenue remains within the host countries
- We do not create tourist circuits by running group trips back to back, all year round, through vulnerable communities we visit
- All group tours will have local guides and drivers working alongside Wild Frontiers tour leaders. For both group and tailor-made tours, we always endeavour to use locally-owned accommodation rather than chain hotels, eat in locally-owned establishments, and purchase our supplies from local communities
- We promote socially conscience tourism through respecting and encouraging cross-cultural exchange. In each destination we develop close relationships with drivers and guides, and we feel the interaction between our friends and our clients offers both parties a valuable understanding between cultures
- We are proud to facilitate an enduring support structure for the communities we visit through our Wild Frontiers Foundation
- A Code of Conduct is included in all pre-departure information preparing our clients on how to travel responsibly, including advice on cultural norms, treading lightly, tipping and bartering
- Our tour leaders are trained to uphold our policies, including briefing clients on appropriate/responsible behaviour throughout their trip
- We are members of both AITO (the Association of Independent Tour Operators) and Responsibletravel.com and have been approved as a Responsible Tour Operator under their set criteria, and in 2012 we won the Guardian/Observer’s ‘Best Ethical Tour Operator’ award
- We are committed to continuously reviewing and developing our responsible business policy and behaviour, through client, tour leader and ground supplier feedback and in response to changing social and political conditions
What we expect of our travellers
- To take pride in being an active ethical traveller, taking responsibility for your behaviour whilst on our tours and adhering to our code of conduct
- To follow the guidelines provided in your pre-departure information regarding cultural sensitivity, which can include but is not limited to; asking permission when taking photos, wearing appropriate dress in religious destinations and to not encourage begging by handing sweets or money to children
- To demand responsible policies are being upheld and to let your tour leader know if you feel this is not the case
- To complete your feedback questionnaires, letting us know your thoughts on responsible travel in the country/region you visited with us