By Anne Zimmerman
Sustainable Travel has become a hot topic and, like Living Abroad, has occupied public discussion over the last few months, especially within the travel industry. What will the industry look like when this pandemic has finally been tamed?
Defined (by Charlie on Travel) as “finding a way that tourism can be maintained long-term without harming natural and cultural environments, Sustainable Travel should minimize the negative impacts of tourism and be beneficial to the area in which it takes place.”
As Barbara and I reviewed Cornucopia Journeys’ business at our recent annual meeting and imagined how we might support sustainable travel as we move forward into a new age, we realized that in our small way, we have from our very beginning promoted sustainable travel. Our service is totally and exclusively personalized, encouraging a very personal experience, reaching deep into the culture of the places clients are visiting. We encourage clients to stay at small locally-run boutique hotels that are inexorably linked to their location.
We use local guides and encourage walking and biking tours that give the client a very personal and immediate interaction with the people and environment. We encourage clients to visit and support local artisans. We use local vendors for client activities like cooking classes that give clients a sensorial insight into the culture of the locality and the country. We provide guidance to locally-run restaurants, owned and operated by people tied to place and proud to represent their culinary culture.
We emphasize exploring in depth the culture of the destinations they are visiting by joining in local festivals, exploring local businesses that have grown naturally out of local traditions and resources, introducing them to local history, encouraging conversations with the people who live there and who testify to the spirit and essence of place.
This approach to travel flows naturally from our personal relationships with travel over the years. It is why we do what we do: because we want our clients to be in love with the places they visit, to understand them on a deeper level, and to appreciate the differences and similarities of local life to their own lives. It is a very personal broadening of horizons.
Our very first clients were a group of friends who came to Italy to understand why I came so many years ago and never left. Their visit started with an introductory talk on what they were to see over the next few days: a history, both political and cultural, of Tuscany & Italy, prepared and delivered by our favorite (and much-missed) guide Silvia, our interpreter of the stones who was to guide the group several times over the succeeding days. Theirs was a very full agenda for the 5 days of their visit, including walking tours, artisan visits, a demonstration of olive oil production that has been a Tuscan tradition for centuries, and a day touring through the Tuscan countryside, in and of itself reason to stay in Italy!
This was the beginning of our Cornucopia adventures. We have learned a great deal since 2013. We have become increasingly more attentive to sustainability issues as we guide clients in building their special journey. It is clear that this leads to an ever more meaningful experience. And it is exceedingly satisfying when clients return home with their cornucopias full of memories. I love it when, years later, someone writes to say they were remembering with joy their visit to the Volpaia winery as they sipped a recently purchased bottle of that precious wine.
Can we all do better to limit harm to the local environments and cultures, support local economies, and encourage more sustainable travel? We certainly can. At Cornucopia Journeys we do so by building on our corporate culture, one that grew out of an instinctual understanding of the need to support and preserve these cultures. And these environments.
We are ready and eager to meet this future. May it come soon!
