The Sustainable Traveller: Offset your personal and corporate impact

Whether for business or pleasure, we’re travelling more than ever before. And aside from ticking the carbon offset button when booking a flight, most of us give little thought to the environmental and social footprint of our jet-setting ways.

Dayana Brooke wants to change this, so last year she started an ecotourism travel booking and advising agency called The Sustainable Traveller.

She’s now using a 17-year long career in travel, and a lifetime of caring about the planet, to curate life-altering trips that don’t cost the earth. 

Dayana takes a holistic approach to planning sustainable travel, from selecting greener accommodation options to arranging Tesla transfers. This can be a boon for corporates who want to offset their carbon footprints with better choices that meet their reporting agendas.

For private travellers, Dayana’s input can be as simple as selecting a hotel close to key sightseeing spots, or for the more dedicated, she can arrange volunteering or conservation programs. She also looks out for sustainable tours to send her clients on.

Dayana is an advocate for off-season and local travel. She also chooses to promote countries and locations that have the appropriate infrastructure to cope with tourists.

“We all love to travel and I’m making it easy for you to search, book and travel as sustainably as possible,” she says.

Corporate clients

Although companies are now taking corporate social responsibility more seriously than ever before, Dayana believes the social and environmental impacts of corporate travel are still often overlooked.

She’s now trialling a new program specifically to help corporates reduce the environmental impact of their travel. This could involve choosing greener hotels for business trips, vegetarian meals on flights and eco-friendly activities for team bonding events.

Checklists and certification help to separate the options

To decide what’s sustainable and what’s not, she uses a number of certification programs, including EarthCheck, as well as a set of criteria she devised herself.

Dayana also leverages her own travelling experience and industry connections to help her shape the best possible experience for her clients. She’s an accredited travel advisor with ATAS and affiliated with the best in the travel industry, including Savenio and Virtuoso.

Contributing through the bottom line

The company is also a member of 1% For the Planet and contributes 1 per cent of every travel booking towards environmental projects. It also offsets carbon of client travel by planting trees as part of a commitment to Greenfleet Australia.