Jacada Travel has reinforced its commitment towards responsible travel with the appointment of Natalie Lyall-Grant as positive impact coordinator. A traveler who has worked with a range of hotels, destination management companies (DMCs) and tour operators around the world, Lyall-Grant is taking stock of experiences created by the company’s trip designers with consideration of local partners and the preservation of the destinations that guests explore.
Lyall-Grant arrived at Jacada’s London headquarters fresh from 12 years of working with travel outfits from Vietnam to Sri Lanka and Australia to Indonesia. Along the way, she became well acquainted with the many positive aspects of low-impact travel, including the benefits of tourism on host communities and environments, while also developing sustainable strategies and travel experiences that inspire travelers to connect with destinations through their people, history, heritage and environment.
She was a pioneer for change in Sri Lanka, where in 2015 she convinced the DMC she worked with to become the first in the country to remove elephant riding from its itineraries. The decision made waves in Sri Lanka and sparked a debate that led many other DMCs to follow suit. “I want Jacada to take a longer-term approach to ensuring that future generations are able to enjoy the kind of high-value, low-impact travel that we offer today,” Lyall-Grant said. “When travel is done responsibly, it can have a positive impact on the environment, host communities and those who travel, as well as the many people who are employed both directly and indirectly through tourism.”
The company’s experiences across six continents are designed to take the weight off the shoulders of travelers by providing them with knowledge and advice they need to feel empowered to make better choices. Lyall-Grant says: “We seek out accommodations, guides, transportation, and partners that are ‘purpose-driven’ and can demonstrate their commitment to both the environment and their local communities.”
Jacada is able to take clients beyond the concept of “responsible travel” into realms of “positive impact travel,” which Lyall-Grant explains as “travel in which trips contribute to longer-term goals, such as rebuilding ecosystems, solving complex social issues, or protecting threatened species and habitats.”
Jacada’s parent company, Wilderness, has partnered with Carbon Ark and the Zambian Ministry of Green Economy and Environment to launch a carbon store and sequestration project that aims to protect millions of hectares of game management areas around Kafue National Park.
Lyall-Gran’s top picks for positive impact travel include Tswalu, South Africa, where guests can become part of the game reserve’s conservation efforts; the sustainable Galapagos Safari Camp; Hotel Excelsior Dubrovnik in Croatia, where guests receive guidelines on how to follow conservation-driven rules of the national parks during their stay on in-room IPTV slides, as well as energy-saving tips to support Excelsior’s eco-efforts; and Shinta Mani Wild, an eco-camp in Cambodia that employs a Wildlife Alliance ranger to patrol its 865 acres, arresting poachers and loggers and releasing captured wildlife, among a host of other tasks.
For more information, visit www.jacadatravel.com.
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