Sustainable Tourism & Responsible Travel

Aegean Dreams support sustainable tourism and encourage responsible travel. Over the years our team actively contributed to sustainable tourism by creating awareness to travelers, adopting sustainable business practices and continuous engagement with the destination tourism organizations and local community.

What is sustainable tourism?

Sustainable tourism refers to sustainable practices by the tourism industry with stakeholders such as governments,  destination tourism organizations, accommodation owners, tour operators, and travel agents. It represents the inclination to acknowledge all impacts of tourism and finding solutions to reduce the negative impacts and promote the positive impacts. Some negative impacts are: over-tourism, damage to the environment, generate conflict locally, both culturally and economically just to name a few. The positive impacts are: landscape restoration, job creation, cultural and heritage preservation, among others.

The UN Environment Programme and UN World Tourism Organization explained sustainable tourism as “tourism that takes full account of its current and future economical, social and environmental impacts, addressing the needs of visitors, the industry, the environment and host communities”.  This lay down the path for all aspiring stakeholders in tourism to follow.

What is responsible travel?

In a broader sense, responsible travel refers to adopting a defined pattern of travel behavior and making conscious choices according to sustainable tourism practices. Whether you travel for leisure, work or business purposes, it is within the realm of tourism industry and your behavior and choices will have an impact on the destination. Be it to protect and respect local customs, or maximizing the eco-social benefits to the destination, or reducing carbon footprints and wastage for a positive impact on the environment, modern travelers want to travel responsibly!

How is Aegean Dreams contributing to sustainable tourism?

Aegean Dreams is the first travel agency from Singapore and one of the few members in Southeast Asia to join the Global Sustainable Tourism Council,  who established and manages global standards and criteria for sustainable travel and tourism. We strives to take the lead from the council in adopting the best practices in sustainability to:

• Combat climate change and over-tourism.

• Promote deeper connections with locals and richer experiences for travelers.

• Empower local communities and protect our environment.

• Change the world through responsible travel.

We hope to contribute, however small it may be, to the international Sustainable Development Goals. We also pledged to act responsible to protect local customs and eco-systems by choosing sustainable travel service providers that are accredited, whenever possible, or partners that are aligned to the sustainable tourism criteria. We also incorporated some best practices in our marketing campaigns and travel operations such as focus on quality of travelers over tourist numbers, promote in-depth travel over touch-and-go sightseeing, promote more intimate engagement with locally owned businesses over chain establishments, just to name a few.

Sustainable tourism is a ongoing long term commitment and we are looking forward to continue doing our part not only as a stakeholder in the travel industry, but also as a stakeholder of our beloved planet.