Elevate Destinations pays a proportion of the profit from every trip it sells to benefit the environmental preservation and community development of the host country. The company offers “extraordinary travel with a philanthropic intent, travel combined with social and environmental education inviting travelers to new levels of awareness and investment”.

© Paul Mannix

I would be a lot happier if Elevate Travel put a figure on what percentage of their profits are donated to non-profit organisations in the host country, just saying “a percentage” is meaningless. If you really want to help you could forgo your trip and donate the whole trip spend to a worthy cause. To me it smacks a bit of have your cake and eat it, you can have a luxury tailored holiday giving you an insight into local culture but you have the additional feel good factor of being a philanthropist. Elevate Destinations came to my attention when I was looking at the travel writing Bounty Board at Matador Travel and noticed that Elevate Destinations were looking for marketing agents to promote their trips thereby “earning you 5% of the net costs of each trip, while an additional 5% will go to grassroots NGOs to help advance social and environmental well being in the countries we travel to.” Strange that's it easier to find out about Elevate Destinations donations policy in a marketing job advert than on their own site. Maybe the non profits in the host country get a higher percentage if Elevate Destinations sell a trip directly to the traveller? I think that Elevate Destinations should have a clearly stated transparent written policy on their site about their donations policy.

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