Responsible Travel
It’s our responsibility to the travelers of the future
The Student & Youth Travel Association (SYTA) believes that our members’ commitment to ensuring Responsible Travel for our current and future travelers is essential to our mission of providing life-changing travel experiences for students and youth. As responsible tour providers, we have a duty to foster respect for our planet and its cultures in our tour products and our travelers.
It takes an entire community to ensure that our travel products and services are sustainable, safe, and foster a sense of community and engagement for all our travelers. To help us all understand myriad aspects of Responsible and Sustainable travel, we have gathered a wide assortment of educational and marketing resources here for you to understand the complexities and make your itineraries more responsible. We hope you’ll take advantage of these resources and let us know if there are other things that you need.
If you have questions or you’d like to be a more involved member of the Responsible Travel Community, please contact us at info@SYTA.org.
Responsible Travel Position Statement
The Student & Youth Travel Association believes that our mission of providing life-changing travel experiences for students and youth is strongly supported by our members’ commitment to ensure responsible, inclusive and sustainable travel products. Our goal is that our products not only enhance and regenerate tourism destinations now and for the future, but also impact, educate and engage students and youth, providing them with responsible travel experiences that deliver on their values: sustainability, safety and a sense of community and engagement.
SYTA’s RESPONSIBLE TRAVEL VALUES
- Respect for our planet and its cultures
- Ensuring a sense of community and engagement
- Future-focused
- Commitment to safety
- Transparency
- Fostering peace
Learn About Responsible Travel With These Important Resources
SYTA would like to thank our partners for sharing their in-depth educational courses with us here.
What you need to know about “SDGs” – Sustainable Development Goals
If you are developing a Responsible Travel program for your firm, it will help to know that many companies use the Sustainable Development Goals– commonly known as “SDGs” – as a starting point and a guide. The SDGs were developed by the World Tourism Organization as a universal call to action to help eradicate poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity by 2030.
There are four specific goals that the tourism industry can specifically affect. We invite you to click on the link below to learn about and be conversant and active in achieving these goals for a more sustainable tourism industry.
Go to Tourism for SDGs Platform
Tourism Cares is a non-profit dedicated to advancing sustainability and meaningful travel for the tourism industry by providing resources, education, and programming to create positive social, environmental, and economic impact for communities around the globe.
Click here to take advantage of the Tourism Cares education content that includes Sustainability Training courses, webinars, seminars and access to their Help Desk.
Click here to explore Tourism Cares’ Meaningful Travel Map to help you incorporate fully vetted responsible and sustainable destinations and suppliers for your itineraries.
RISE Travel Institute is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization with a mission to create a more just and equitable world through travel education.
Click here to access the full range of RISE Travel Institute courses
We also invite you to visit PeaceThroughTourism.org to better understand how Responsible Travel can also promote Peaceful Travel, one of the core values of our community.
Travel Unity is a 501(c)(3) focused on increasing diversity in the world of travel through individual and community empowerment. They connect community groups and individuals with travel, cultural, and educational experiences to promote personal and professional growth.
Travel Unity offers certification courses in applied diversity that you can access here:
- Train your staff on the basics of applied DEI through our foundational certificate, TUIC
- Learn about DEI alongside other industry leaders (and craft a Comprehensive DEI Plan) in our Certified Diversity Travel Professional (CDTP) program
- Demonstrate alignment with our DEI Standards for Travel and Tourism by becoming Certified by Travel Unity
Click here to see SYTA’s Responsible Travel webinars in our Archive of Virtual Education programs.
SYTA Members Only – Our proprietary Marketing Toolkit offers messaging, graphics and video that can be useful in building your programs. Contact acannon@SYTA.org to receive the link to the Toolkit.
