Our Belief: Travel as a Force for Good
At GeoEx, we believe that travel can be meaningful and enriching for travelers and their host communities. For forty years we’ve practiced this philosophy by choosing responsible routes, uplifting local partners, and seeking to preserve the environmental and cultural integrity of the destinations we visit.
Sustainability and Your Travels
As a GeoEx guest, you are welcomed into this philosophy before even departing your home country. The gifts in your pre-departure gift box support social enterprises, curated with care by members of our team; many are made with recycled materials. In 2018, we launched the GeoEx itinerary app, greatly reducing the amount of paper we print and mail.
Since 1982, GeoEx has hand-selected local accommodations and nurtured relationships with colleagues around the world who share our values. You’ll stay in hotels on the cutting edge of sustainability and innovation. More often than not, our travelers return with tales of their safari in electric vehicles or their back-of-house tour of a lodge’s onsite desalination plant (yes, really)! You’ll travel in the company of expert guides who are tackling pressing environmental challenges, and who may offer you reusable water bottles or invite you to join a tree-planting initiative. Many of our local colleagues, including several hotels, small-ship cruises, and safari lodges, are completely carbon-neutral.
After launching the GeoEx Foundation in 2013, we’ve supported a rotation of medical, educational, and conservation organizations based in the countries we have the privilege of visiting. Several of these organizations may be visited by GeoEx guests, and some have even been suggested by travelers who were introduced to, and inspired by, their work during their trip.
A traveler’s largest environmental impact comes from their flights. In the face of a climate crisis, we take our responsibility as a travel company seriously. We’ve partnered with Tomorrow’s Air, an organization that connects travelers to carbon removal and storage through direct air capture, to support innovative solutions that we need to ensure our healthy future.
Sustainability and GeoEx
We also believe that this is still not enough. Passing our fortieth anniversary, our mission is to provide the same incredible experiences to our travelers while reducing our company’s carbon footprint at home.
For more than 10 years, GeoEx has proudly held a California Green Business certification. The accreditation process involves analyzing a company’s water and energy conservation, waste diversion, pollution prevention, and commitment to sustainable transport and supply chains. This means our laptops, refrigerator, printer, and other office equipment are all Energy Star-rated. We use recycled and unbleached paper products and compostable plates and utensils. We support our local staff’s commutes with secure bike storage, while remote staff receive reimbursement for energy-efficient or reusable purchases for their home office. When organizing company events, we hire local vendors with deep roots in our community.
GeoEx is proud to be the only travel company located within Tides Converge, a collaborative, sustainable workplace that is also home to several dynamic social enterprises and nonprofits. We also collaborate with like-minded, game-changing travel organizations as members of The Conscious Travel Foundation, a “global community uniting members of the travel industry to reshape the impact of tourism on the world.”
Many of our staff have been with our company for years, if not decades, and have seen how climate change has impacted the places they love at home and abroad. Our team dreamed up a “Green Your Home Office” competition during which staff members were reimbursed for, among other things, energy-efficient equipment upgrades. And we are proud to offset the carbon footprint of all staff travel on educational trips to the destinations where we offer travel.
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Sustainable travel has always been in our DNA. We’ve long been pioneers of the adventure travel industry, and we are excited to pioneer the future of sustainable, climate-friendly travel as we join with other companies to protect our magnificent planet.
