How exactly do tourism dollars support conservation?

Read more about: conservation, geotourism, local travel, nature, sea turtles, wildlife

Conservation tourism – considered to be a “sub-niche” of sorts of geotourism, in line with voluntourism and “local travel” – is booming.

Travelers continue to seek meaningful opportunities to immerse in and support the natural environments and communities they visit, while destinations proliferate the means to capitalize as a way to boost their economies and increase ecological and even cultural awareness.

By supporting efforts to protect endangered species through fees and donations, conservation tourism aims to benefits local communities; increasing awareness and appreciation for our planet’s environmental and ecological concerns while delivering a much-needed sustainable source of revenue for conservation efforts.

These tours also provide a viable economic development alternative for local communities that have few other income-generating options.

However, it can be difficult for travelers to accurately determine just how much of their financial commitment directly benefits conservation projects and the local economies of their destinations, as opposed to benefiting the travel purveyors themselves – as is unfortunately sometimes the case.

No more guesswork

However, one travel/tour group is looking to negate that stigma by placing a layer of absolute transparency between the travelers’ wallets and the communities they help to flourish – a worthy model for the conservation tourism as well as the entire geo/eco-tourism spectrum to follow.

SEE Turtles, a well-known wildlife conservation tourism project, has eliminated the “guessing game” by establishing a unique and completely transparent pricing model that clearly lays out the economic impact of conservation tourism dollars on environmental sustainability and responsible community development.

The new pricing allows conscientious travelers to engage in meaningful wildlife conservation initiatives alongside local sea turtle researchers, while fully aware of exactly where their money is going and how it directly benefits the cause.

The company puts it all out there: demonstrating exactly how their tour guests’ financial contributions contribute to the sustainability of turtle conservation projects and the surrounding communities.

Right on their website for the world to see, SEE Turtles outlines each tour’s estimated per person amount – in dollars and percentages – that gets allocated to two key areas: Conservation and Turtle Communities.

Conservation includes fees and donations given to local conservation organizations to protect turtle habitat, hire local residents, and support scientific research and to SEE Turtles to promote our educational programs. For volunteer trips, this also includes the value of donated time.

Communities represents the direct and indirect spending by tour guests to support locally-owned businesses near sea turtle hotspots including hotels, restaurants, shops, and entertainment venues. Such income helps communities recognize the value of sea turtles as an important resource to protect and inspires local support for conservation.

According to SEE Turtles, at least 30% of each SEE Turtles trip goes towards support of conservation and communities. The average across all trips is 48%, with 16% directly supporting conservation and 32% spent in local communities.

The $150 per person average supporting conservation efforts is the equivalent of hiring a researcher to patrol a nesting beach in Costa Rica for two weeks.

“Travelers are becoming increasingly aware of their responsibility to help protect nature and local cultures,” said Jim Dion, Associate Director, Center for Sustainable Destinations at National Geographic. “SEE Turtles’ Conservation Pricing Model sets a new standard for transparency that will help travelers to evaluate tourism options and feel confident their travel dollars are benefiting local communities and conservation efforts.”

As more and more conservation-geared companies move toward this or a similar model of pricing transparency, it will be interesting to see how traveler numbers fare.

As recent reports have suggested, money is of course still a factor in travel decisions – especially in such trying economic times. Even responsible travelers can be skeptical, and often with good reason.

Photo by Foto Blitz Color via Flickr

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