Written by Alexandria Hilton

If you are interested in contributing to hurricane Helene relief efforts in the Sarasota/Manatee area, please consider the following options:

Two weeks ago, I found myself in Roma, sat outside at Matricionella, enjoying artichokes and pasta and the best bloody Barbera my tastebuds have ever met with two of luxury travel’s most innovative minds. I was doing my part as the rookie; listening, learning, absorbing, enjoying my food, mostly; my head slowly craned left as I slurped spaghetti from my fork.

“Right, but, no one is choosing where to book based on the company’s sustainability efforts.”

I chewed slowly, calculating how I’d chime in respectfully. You must know, reader, I am a non-confrontational person; I thrive in peaceful situations. When I feel strongly about the topic at hand, (or perhaps when I am 1.5 glasses in) I just might push back.

You must also know that when I started writing this piece, with the intention of highlighting the conservation efforts of a safari operator across the world, Hurricane Helene had recently ripped through my hometown. I had no real idea of the damage because my family, myself, others I loved were minimally affected, fortunate as ever. Sure, on my morning walk I saw sailboats ashore and palms strewn about but that was…standard…sadly. Now, three days later, I sit and listen to national news reports of deaths in North Carolina. I talk with old friends who tell me they lost everything and are planning on couch-surfing for a month-or-so while they continue to take classes, Monday to Friday, nine to five. I scroll social media and see homes on fire, GoFundMe pages for people I waved to just last week. Neighbors, really.

“I disagree, actually. I mean, maybe not now, not your clients. But whenever the Instagram algorithm feeds me some ad to some shop that lures me into an actual *click* I always, always, always look for a website tab on their ethical practices. If they don’t feature one, I won’t buy from them.”

Intent on making my point that night, I argued that in the world of luxury travel, the number 1 influencing factor is price, yes. The travelers who chose luxury travel are not making a point to inquire about the environmental consciousness of the hotel or cruise brands in your portfolio, sure. But the health of our ecosystems requires a shift in our collective consciousness, as consumers, yes, but even more-so as advisors of the consumers.

I strongly believe it shouldn’t be entirely up to the consumer! That’s why we are here; it is our responsibility, more and more each day, to provide you with options that we love, options for travel that have a net-neutral or (even better) positive impact on the environment with no sacrifice of the quality of the product.

Just as a physical home, the structure that keeps us warm and dry at night, meets our basic safety needs, allowing us the space to think creatively and love people and seek adventure and travel; the natural world around us is essential to survival. Of all beings. It seems quite obvious, I know, but we do this thing where we become accustomed to what we see each day; we take our house for granted, we take the tides for granted, the sunshine, the air. And then the dependable, reliable structures and systems that allow us to the peace-of-mind to go about our days, enriching our lives with excess, come apart — the seas rise and we lose our homes and we are reminded that to be safe and dry and warm is necessary in order to do all of the other things we need to do.

United Nations World Tourism Day, first celebrated in 1980, aimed this year to promote Tourism and Peace. The message of theirs I feel pulled toward today, though, is the environmental impact of travel, only one dimension of sustainable tourism, a phrase I became scared to use many years back after someone once scoffed at me and retorted, “that’s an oxymoron.”

Time and time again, I am met with pushback at my rose-colored idea that travelers will ever care enough about their environmental footprint to journey differently, with at least one facet (there are many) of sustainability in mind.

I have this pain in my neck. No matter how much yoga I do these days, I can’t seem to find relief. When I go to sleep at night, in my comfortable bed, under a roof well-in-tact, tucked in at room-temperature, I try to remember to be grateful. I feel a heaviness in my body that is hard to explain.

I remember feeling like this from late May of 2020, on until the end of that year, almost. Maybe it’s election season. Maybe it’s hurricane season. Maybe it’s news of war. Maybe it’s just becoming an adult. Likely it’s all of it.

Wellness is a deeply personal, excruciatingly constant endeavor; we can all do little things each day to be well, to feel good. There are moments, however, that require us to think about collective healing.

How can I make someone else’s day better?

I had coffee with a dear old friend of mine this weekend. She and I chatted over matcha and a flat white and I told her how I’m trying to pay more attention to and take more care of things that I already have. And I told her that I thought I would have saved the world by now. And that I feel this pressure to be doing something to help people in some remote part of some foreign country that actually needs help and that’s why I’m struggling with the idea of being here, in the place I grew up, where everything is fine and perfect and I can’t be of service to anyone.

And it’s painful to replay that conversation, to imagine it happened a matter of hours ago, really.

Here at ATI, before Hurricane Helene devastated the homes of our dear friends and family, we had plans to promote to you, our friends and family, a fundraiser event set to benefit one our favorite organizations in South Africa. While we aim to move forward with that plan, we are faced with the harsh reality that home needs us right now; we are currently hard at work trying to identify some local organizations that promise to directly benefit the people and small businesses we know and love, both here in Sarasota and further up the East Coast of the United States.

If you have any personal connections to organizations that could use our help, please reach out.

Greenwashing is common in the travel industry; at the risk of sounding rather harsh, you are doing the absolute least if the extent of your sustainability efforts are a switch from single-use plastics to reusable water bottles or a placard in the bathroom asking guests to please hang up their towels if they intend to use them again. Just as the problem of Greenwashing may arise in sales and marketing, some large companies that purport to provide disaster relief and ask for your donations to do so have historically been found to do less than they promised you they would. It is always best to get your own hands dirty, sure, but if that’s not an option for you and you want to help, refer to the top of this post where we linked some smaller operations that we know to be doing good work in the area.

As the storm rolled in Thursday night, my brother and I made some comment about how beautiful it is, the way nature teaches us that we are never actually in control of anything the way we think we are.

I believe that we are only ever in control of how we react. And we have a responsibility to react appropriately at this time.

Stay safe & stay tuned for more.

If sustainable travel resonates with you, we’d love to talk about your most conscious options for your next trip, wherever that may be.