Responsible travel is a win: win for you, local places and communities.

MAXIMUM EXPERIENCE & MINIMUM IMPACT: Responsible travel is a win-win for you and local communities. When we travel, we enter someone else’s home. How we explore impacts their culture, economy, and environment. By choosing sustainable tourism, we not only respect local people but also gain more meaningful and authentic experiences.

Travelling responsibly can’t of course fully compensate for the environmental impacts of flying. Read our thoughts on aviation and climate change. But it can benefit local people and give you a far more rewarding and enjoyable holiday.

The Win-Win of Responsible Travel

Sustainable Tourism: Reducing CO2 Emissions

THE 1-2-3 OF REDUCING CO₂ EMISSIONS

Responsible tourism creates many benefits locally, but we must reduce the CO₂ emissions from our holidays. It would be easy to tell you to carry on as normal and that carbon offsets (paying for a project to reduce your emissions) are the answer. But EU research shows 85% of them don’t work; and shifting responsibility elsewhere is not good behaviour. We dropped offsets in 2009 calling them a ‘distraction’.

YOUR HOLIDAY’S CO₂ RESULTS FROM :
1) EMISSIONS IN THE DESTINATION 2) HOW YOU GET THERE AND 3) HOW OFTEN AND FAR YOU TRAVEL. WE MUST FOCUS ON REDUCTION, NOT OFFSETS.

Eco-Friendly Travel: How to Minimize Your Carbon Footprint

1. CO₂EMISSIONS IN THE DESTINATION

What you eat and buy, where you stay, and how you travel around matters. We are working with our destination partners to reduce CO₂, here is what you can do.

2. CO₂EMISSIONS GETTING TO THE DESTINATION

Source: European Environment Agency

Calculate the emissions of a flight.

Compare the emissions of flying with other things in your life.

3. HOW OFTEN YOU TRAVEL

Green Travel Alternatives: Fly Less, Travel More Responsibly
We must fly less (business and pleasure) until zero carbon planes are a reality. Taking fewer holidays with flights, but staying longer, is one way to do this (and more relaxing too!). Taking some holidays closer to home or by rail is another.

Make it count
When you fly, make it count – we carefully select holidays that support local communities and help conserve natural and cultural heritage.

Campaign
As travellers we can’t solve tourism’s role in the climate crisis on our own, and so we have published a Manifesto for Aviation and CO₂ reduction and are lobbying hard for change.

Our Sources:
¹ Return flight to Croatia (Split) – www.flightemissionmap.org
² Average annual emissions from clothing – WRAP (The Waste and Resources Action Programme)
³ Average annual emissions from gas heating – Committee on climate change
⁴ Average annual emissions from driving – Committee on climate change
⁵ Average annual emissions from food – carbonindependent.org

Why Carbon Offsets Don’t Work & What You Can Do Instead

The Problem with Carbon Offsetting

Many view carbon offset schemes as a quick fix for emissions, but they fail to tackle the root cause of climate change—reducing carbon output. Instead of cutting emissions at the source, offsets allow industries, including aviation and tourism, to continue polluting under the illusion of climate responsibility.

A 2017 study commissioned by the European Commission found that 85% of offset projects under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) failed to reduce emissions. In response, the European Union has stopped allowing offsets to count toward emissions reduction targets from 2021 onward.

At our company, we stopped offering carbon offset programs over a decade ago. We no longer promote offset schemes on our product pages, instead encouraging travel operators to focus on actively cutting carbon emissions during trips rather than relying on compensation measures.

Carbon offsetting has been widely used in both the compliance market and the voluntary offset market. Many airlines offer passengers the option to pay extra to “neutralize” their flight emissions by funding projects such as tree planting, wind farms, or distributing energy-efficient stoves. However, through Responsible Travel, we believe offsets are an inadequate solution. Instead of relying on compensation schemes, the travel industry must prioritize cutting carbon emissions at the source to create a truly sustainable future.

The concept of carbon offsets has existed for many years. They occur in two separate contexts, the compliance market and the voluntary offset market. Airline passengers may well be familiar with these, as airlines frequently offer them to customers as a way to compensate for the CO2 emissions from their flights. By voluntarily paying a little extra, based on how much CO2 their flight will generate, a passenger (or businesses) can support an initiative which ‘cancels out’ this CO2 – such as tree planting, a wind farm or the distribution of fuel efficient stoves in developing countries, for example.

The Flaws of Carbon Offsetting

Why Carbon Offsets Don’t Solve the Climate Crisis

1. Offsets Take Too Long to Be Effective
   With aviation growing rapidly and time running out to reverse the climate crisis, experts argue that reducing flights should take priority over relying on carbon offsets. Offsets, like tree planting, take decades to absorb carbon—far too slow to combat the urgent threat of global heating. To keep temperatures below 1.5°C, we must cut emissions at the source instead of delaying action.
2. Offsets Encourage Guilt-Free Polluting
   Carbon offsets create the illusion of ‘guilt-free’ travel, discouraging consumers from cutting down on flights. Friends of the Earth have called them a ‘dangerous distraction.’ In 2009, Responsible Travel stopped offering offsets, recognizing they failed to achieve real carbon reduction. As Professor Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre warns, frequent fliers cannot rely on offsets to justify business-as-usual travel habits.
3. They Shift Responsibility Elsewhere
   Paying another country or community to cut emissions instead of taking direct action is problematic. As environmentalist George Monbiot puts it, “Buying and selling carbon offsets is like pushing the food around on your plate to create the impression that you have eaten it.”
4. Offsets May Not Provide Additional Benefits
   A legitimate offset must lead to additional carbon reductions (eg. planting extra trees or distributing stoves) that wouldn’t occur otherwise—this is known as additionality. However, many projects, like wind farms and reforestation efforts, would have happened regardless, making offsets ineffective.

The Risks and Ineffectiveness of Offsets

1. Difficult to Measure and Maintain
   Calculating how much CO2 is truly offset is complex, especially with forest-based schemes. Factors like illegal logging, deforestation, wildfires, and disease reduce the long-term impact of tree planting projects. Airlines like Virgin Atlantic and EasyJet have funded forests that were later cut down, nullifying their offsets. This is known as ‘carbon leakage’.
2. Offsets Can Harm Indigenous Communities
   Some offset programs restrict local communities from using their own land, preventing them from continuing traditional farming or forestry practices. This outsourcing of emissions reduction often comes at the expense of indigenous people’s rights and livelihoods.
3. Offsets Delay Real Climate Solutions
   Mitigation deterrence’—the false promise of cheap and easy CO2 removal—prevents the aviation sector from making real emissions cuts. Offsets act as a quick fix, delaying urgent innovation and investment while enabling the continued use of high-emission fuels. As Professor Kevin Anderson explains, treating offsetting as equal to mitigation reduces incentives to adopt low-carbon technologies and practices. When companies, governments, and consumers believe they can simply pay to offset carbon, investment in railways, aviation demand management, and decarbonization stalls.
4. Consumer Participation in Offsets Remains Low
   Voluntary carbon offset schemes have historically seen minimal adoption, with only about 1% of consumers choosing to participate.

Aeroplane chemtrail.  Photo credit: Gralo

What Can Be Done Instead?

• Reduce Flights – Choosing alternative transport like trains for shorter journeys can drastically cut your carbon footprint.
• Support Low-Carbon Travel – Opt for eco-friendly accommodations and tour operators committed to reducing emissions, rather than those offering offset gimmicks.
• Advocate for Policy Change – Governments must prioritize real emissions cuts and invest in cleaner transport solutions instead of relying on offset markets.

The Reality of CORSIA and Carbon Offsetting

CORSIA: A Global Aviation Offset Scheme

The Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) aims to curb airline emissions. By 2027, airlines must buy carbon credits every three years to offset their CO2 output.

The Issue with ‘Junk Credits’

Many offset projects—like wind farms and reforestation—would happen anyway, raising concerns about additionality. Critics call these ‘junk credits’, arguing they give a false sense of progress and weaken real climate action. Many environmental campaign organisations have called for these to be excluded from the Paris Agreement and other climate targets, saying that they threaten our ability to really reduce global carbon emissions.

Do Offsets Truly Cut Emissions?

Some projects provide benefits, but labeling them as offsets can be misleading. Without actual emissions reductions, relying on offsets may do more harm than good-make the climate crisis worse.

Travel Responsibly, Explore Meaningfully

By choosing responsible travel, you help protect destinations for future generations while enjoying deeper, more authentic experiences. Every journey is an opportunity to make a positive impact—so why not start now?

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