Center for Responsible Travel (CREST)

Transforming the Way the World Travels

Responsible tourism aims to minimize tourism's negative impacts on the environment and maximize the positive contributions tourism can make to local communities. If left unchecked, large-scale tourism development can damage ecosystems, pollute environments and exploit local communities. But traveling responsibly is not about halting development or staying home. It is about managing travel and destinations in an environmentally and culturally responsible way and designing tourism programs and individual trips carefully, to provide travelers with the experience they seek, while leaving a positive footprint on their destination.