Watching a surfer in Rarotonga / Photo by Stephen Chapman

The reality of what responsible travel promotes is very straight forward and often somewhat intuitive for those who naturally seek experiences and opportunities to learn about the world as they travel.

Researching places, making plans and visiting destinations with the help of some local knowledge is fast becoming more popular as new tools become available through the internet.  By exploiting the social connectivity of the web and tapping into the increasing desire of people to patronise small, local businesses when they travel means that these tools are able to go a long way towards unconsciously fulfilling the social and economical components of responsible tourism – they encourage cross-cultural education and ensure more money is retained by people based in the destination of travel.

The environmental cost of travel may seem like the easiest element to address – just stop flying – yet it is also one of the hardest to combat due to the dramatic shift in mindset required.  Carbon offset contributions have been a good stepping stone for us so far from which to address our concerns, yet fail to deliver what is necessary.  Overland travel by road and rail is promoted more and more these days but unfortunately with the existence of low-cost airlines it’s difficult to find any real financial incentive to embrace these alternatives.

Travel decisions are made around tight budgets for many of us and often the environment takes a back seat because of it.  It is in this area that ‘local travel’ delivers. Websites like couchsurfing.com, whl.travel and Leap Local make it possible to add value to your experience by becoming completely immersed in a new place from a local perspective, whilst simultaneously eliminating expensive accommodation and travel agency costs.  A local insight into a place also generally leads to further money saving tips, making a pretty strong case for travelling locally.  If we could tick the environmental box in a similar way that saves us money whilst adding experiential value to our trip we’d be well on the way to ‘making travel fair’.

When Tom Allen of ride earth hitch-hiked from the UK to Istanbul a few weeks ago I wondered whether this means of travel will ever one day shake the dodgy, hippy, unwashed stigma associated with it and break into the mainstream.  It may not get us across the Atlantic but it can certainly offer an experience to take us a long way east.