Welcome
Fair Trade Tourism is one of Africa's leading non-profit organisations dedicated to using tourism to create better places to live, work and visit. Developed in Africa, for Africa, it presents a way of doing business that adapts the 'conventional' tourism business model - which is often extractive and burdensome for the destination - to one that seeks to ensure that the people who contribute their land, resources, labour and knowledge to tourism reap the benefits, and that the natural environment on which it all depends is treated with respect in pursuit of more resilient destinations.
Doing tourism the Fair Trade and responsible way is about ensuring that tourism businesses consider and actively manage their impacts, while seeking to generate benefits for the business and its guests, team, surrounding community, and the natural environment. It requires two critical elements for success: dedication to doing business differently, and a passion for seeing how much good can be achieved along the way.
If you see the potential for this kind of tourism, we look forward to supporting your business as you progress along the journey.
Before getting started, please ensure that you are eligible for the FTT Certification journey:
- your operations are based in Africa;
- you have been trading for a minimum of one (1) year; and
- you operate a tourism product as defined by FTT, i.e., providing facilities, services, and / or experiences directly to tourists through, e.g., an accommodation, food service, activity, attraction, venue, volunteer tourism programme, and / or community day tour.
Tourism businesses that are eligible for FTT Certification include the following scopes:
- Accommodation, e.g., lodge, bush camp, hotel, guesthouse, B&B, etc.
- Food service, e.g., restaurant, café, provision of meals at guest house, etc.
- Activity, e.g., boat cruise, zipline, etc. (with a fixed “footprint”, i.e., consistent operating area)
- Attraction, e.g., historic site, museum, cultural centre, etc.
- Venue, e.g., conference centre, exhibition area, meeting rooms, etc.
- Volunteer tourism, e.g., where tourists combine leisure travel with meaningful contributions to local development or conservation programmes
- Community tour, e.g., Soweto by Bicycle, Afternoon Walk to the Beats of Local Jazz, Street Food with Thabo, etc. These ‘tours’ must be the core product, i.e., they are independently marketed, packaged day tours that involve the same tour partners every time the tour is offered.
If you are a travel agent, tour operator or DMC then we recommend that you register with Travelife for certification. For further information about Travelife please visit www.travelife.info.
If you are eligible, go ahead and Register your business for FTT. There is no better time to get started than now! For further information about Fair Trade Tourism please visit www.fairtradetourism.org.
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