Sustainable Tourism

What’s sustainable tourism?

Tourism is about showing the most beautiful and amazing features of our World. From breathtaking landscapes to ancient archaeological sites filled with mystery and history.
This attracts the attention of tourists, trekkers, travel enthusiasts and more to witness and discover these amazing places. What sustainable tourism does is to prevent struggles this new amount of people coming to these areas can create. Such as pollution, crowds deteriorating the sites, acoustic pollution and more.

This can only be done with a plan and of course following the rules the local and international authorities command.

What are the impacts of tourism?

Tourism is not a natural activity which means that it creates an impact on the area it is developing. This impact can be both beneficial and also harmful to the sector it is affecting.

We will cover both of them as well. The impact that tourism creates on the environment, society, economy and culture.

Environmental

Touristic places are known to be crowded by both local and foreign visitors. This is not much of an issue itself. The impact comes due to the addition of solid waste generated by this new number of people coming to a determined area. Combining this with poor regulations and restrictions results in damaging the scenery of the place and also contributing to the excess of pollution affecting both the flora and fauna as well as to the population of the zone.

The Alpaca Expeditions solution

It is always necessary to follow the authorities’ regulations and rules but it is also important to provide new ideas and to educate both the staff and clients. We work with the rule of ‘’no footprint behind’’ and as a promise we leave every space used or every campsite as we founded or even in better conditions so the next visitors can benefit from this. We are sharing our culture and land, there is no competition here.
We implement this ‘’rule’’ to all of our treks and tours and along regulated experiences such as The Inca Trail we contribute with generating ideas to make the trek better and more environment-friendly.

Economical

This new number of visitors creates as well a new source of income for both the state and the local population. Creating new business opportunities and also new job opportunities. Formal and informal businesses display their services based on the tourist attraction of its zone. Such as tour operators, restaurants, shops, hotels, to mention a few. This new economical activity will lead to more people living near the area and also contributing to the amount of individuals located in the same area at the same time. Creating an environmental impact as we talked about above.

The Alpaca Expeditions solution

We are a very proud local operator. We benefit from tourism but know that the activity can’t finish there. As a company we are very strict on our social projects. Along the year we provide different kinds of support or campaigns towards the local communities our porters and staff come from to share this economical income generated by tourism.
You can see more of it HERE

Cultural

Having a new number of people from all over the coming to a new area will create a new impact. This can be both beneficial and also harmful for a society. It creates a new idea of how big the World is and also the idea of growing through this new activity.
People start learning the most common language of the new visitors. Careers like tour guide, licensed in tourism, to mention a few start getting more fields to work with. New business opportunities occur and with that a new mindset to use this new activity.

What Alpaca Expeditions do

When Machu Picchu became a World Wonder and the Inca Trail got more known. The amount of visitors increased largely. This created a new opportunity for new tour operators and also staff to get more applicable job opportunities.
The bad thing is that this new amount of visitors and local workers created a new amount of solid waste, crowds at every park, etc.
Alpaca Expeditions as a local operator acknowledge this and got to a solution.

All of our staff from guides to porters and trekking chefs know how to take care of our touristic attractions. All of them know how to reduce the impact of crowds and also to control the solid waste created at every tour. This is because we permanently teach them about the best way to reduce the impact tourism has on our land and the best way to transmit this to our clients.
If we teach our staff and our clients on how to respect and learn about our culture. Everything will work perfectly and this knowledge will keep growing towards more people.

We proudly call ourselves the Green Machine. The #1 tour operator leading the sustainable tourism activities in Cusco and along all of our treks. Our philosophy of ‘’no footprint behind’’ is shared to our clients and practice by our whole team. Alpaca Expeditions has as a top priority the protection of our environment and also to educate our people to keep on this practice on a daily basis. The only way to provide an A class service is by respecting the land we are stepping on and also by following all the regulations provided by our authorities and more.

Everytime you travel with Alpaca Expeditions you become part of the Green Machine family. You become part of our social projects, our reforestation activities, our lectures to our staff to provide the best experience possible while at the same time transmitting our love and respect for our Pachamama.

We work with small groups so we can improve our approach towards this topic and also to guarantee the best experience. Small groups are a more gentle way to access every archaeological park and also to provide a dedicated service. We guarantee the best, safest and more thoughtful experience to all of our clients and the best working experience for our staff.

We can assure that every trek or tour will be done with the same dedication and following all of our rules to preserve the sites visited. We control the number of clients to avoid crowds. This also allows us to be able to communicate all of this in a more effective way and to keep this knowledge to be transmitted to future generations.

Travel with Alpaca Expeditions means you are travelling Green and Sustainable!