Rainforest Alliance

Wholesale tour operators and travel agencies play a major role in influencing industry standards through the vacation packages they design and offer to their clients. The Rainforest Alliance works with agencies and wholesalers around the world to promote ecologically and socially responsible best practices for tourism businesses in Latin America.

Travel agencies and wholesalers that enter into formal collaborative agreements with the Rainforest Alliance commit to the requirement that at least half of the hotels and other providers in their package tours be certified by one of the leading tourism certification organizations or are verified by the Rainforest Alliance.

The wholesalers agree to contact their customers when they return from trips to survey them about their experiences and urge them to convince friends and family members to take similar trips. Survey information is shared with the Rainforest Alliance.

For our part, the Rainforest Alliance provides travel agencies and wholesalers with updated lists of tourism businesses in Latin America that have adopted sustainable practices, and we organize familiarization trips for company managers to areas that have a critical mass of sustainable hotels and other tourism businesses.

For more information or to get involved, contact us at sustainabletourism@ra.org.

Sustainable Vendors

• Lodging, tours, transportion and restaurants
• Airlines