Regenerative Travel has been popping up a lot in media this year, and while Chaa Creek has been in the forefront of this growing global movement for some time now, we thought we’d offer a brief explanation of our take on this positive travel trend.
As our loyal readers would have noticed here, and in our articles as they’ve appeared in Yahoo!, Business Insider and other international media, we think Regenerative Travel is a big deal.
And we’re not alone.
Forbes magazine recently interviewed Amanda Ho, a founder of regenerativetravel.com, who had this to say:
“We are excited to see that Regenerative Travel is a top trend for 2021 in the media and gaining traction in the industry. We are seeing more and more interest each day from each facet of the travel industry to learn and understand how they can adopt regenerative practices.”
Ms Ho goes on to highlight how travel destinations have contributed to an area’s biodiversity and supported agriculture.
Which makes us happy to point out two aspects of Regenerative Travel at Chaa Creek that have been in place for years now:
Chaa Creek’s 400-acre private nature reserve
Established early on, and expanded over decades, this rainforest reserve has been a labor of love for Chaa Creek’s owners and staff – and especially for the licensed naturalist guides who conduct birding, nature walks, and horseback excursions along the miles of signposted trails running throughout this pristine tract of beautiful rainforest.
And for guests wanting to further explore the diverse habitats of the Reserve, there are guided ATV jungle safaris and river excursions on the meandering Macal River.
In addition to preserving Belize’s rich biodiversity, the Chaa Creek Rainforest Reserve engages thousands of visitors with the natural world each year.
The Maya Organic Farm
This onsite resource serves a variety of purposes. In addition to supplying fresh organic produce to the resort’s Mariposa Restaurant and the Guava Limb Café in San Ignacio Town, the Farm is also a valued educational attraction for guests who wish to see traditional farming techniques in action.
And, by reducing food miles while contributing to the restaurants’ farm-to-table dining, the Maya Organic Farm supports Chaa Creek’s overarching vision of sustainable tourism and regenerative travel.
As an added bonus – young visitors can enjoy learning about organic farming, and, after helping to harvest, they can present the fruits (and veggies and herbs) of their labors on their family’s dinner plates that night.
This is regenerative tourism in action.
We’ll be posting more blogs about Regenerative Travel, and, for now, this description from The New York Times is a good place to start:
“If sustainable tourism, which aims to counterbalance the social and environmental impacts associated with travel, was the aspirational outer limit of ecotourism…the new frontier is regenerative travel, or leaving a place better than you found it.”
The article then quotes Johnathon Day, a sustainable tourism professor at Indiana’s Purdue University:
“Sustainable tourism is sort of a low bar. At the end of the day, it’s just not making a mess of the place.
“Regenerative tourism says, let’s make it better for future generations,” he concludes.
We never thought of sustainable travel as a low bar, but, as a family owned and operated Eco-lodge, we couldn’t agree more about regenerative tourism’s positive potential for our future generations.
We’ll be posting more blogs about the benefits of – make that the need for – regenerative travel, and hope we’ve sparked your interest in this global movement enough that you’ll want to learn more. To help, we left links to a few sources below.
Better still, come for a visit at Chaa Creek to see regenerative tourism in action.
We’ll show you how authentic farm-to-table dining, from our Maya Organic Farm to your plate, works. And the Open-Hearth project will add a delicious introduction to Belize’s colorful, multicultural cuisine. You’ll leave seeing how sustainable farming supports the environment, and with recipes showing how traditional ethic cooking supports health – all while enjoying a casually luxurious vacation.
How good is that? And, if you’re not afraid to get your hands into some healthy organic earth, you may even help pick part of your dinner.