This article is published as part of our special series Ecotourism Then and Now, commemorating the 20th anniversary of The International Ecotourism Society (TIES), through a joint effort by TIES and Megan Epler Wood, author of this article and founder of TIES.

Part 1 – Ecotourism 20 Years Ago

Part 2 – Ecotourism Now

The business of ecotourism has not changed dramatically in 20 years, though it has expanded globally. Businesses around the world have increasingly adopted ecotourism principles in an effort to create more low-impact and greener tourism opportunities. This social and environmental business model has continued to prove viable for companies around the world.

In 1994, South Africa emerged from apartheid and became one of the most dynamic and innovative countries in the world for ecotourism, bringing a wide array of new tourism companies to the fore. Firms like Wilderness Safaris began to spread their wings, developing massive regions for wildlife viewing, with goals to conserve wild lands and benefit local people. Wilderness Safaris presently operates privately on 6.5 million acres of land in southern Africa with 60 lodges and camps.

They are partnering with wilderness conservancies and concessioning properties while maintaining strong partnerships with local communal organizations. They manage hundreds of staff in Botswana, Namibia, Malawi, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and the Seychelles. In Namibia alone, they have provided entry-level guide training to over 1,000 local people in the last six years. Wildlife conservation is being supported via a portion of guest revenues that are allocated to benefit such efforts as Namibia’s Save the Rhino Trust.

International Expeditions (IE), one of TIES’s earliest supporting companies, was sold to a larger firm in 2000 and then sold again. Steve Cox, the company co-founder, relates that after the first sale the company was not immediately able to continue its investments in environmental conservation and social well-being; but when the TUI group of companies took over, the commitment to sustainable development was greater than ever before.

IE continues forward with a corporate social responsibility program of some magnitude in the Iquitos, Peru region with the local NGO CONAPAC. In the 1990s, IE launched a variety of headline-grabbing rainforest learning and exploration programs near Iquitos, including one of the first canopy walkways in the Americas and seminars on the rainforest which were covered by science magazines worldwide.

The commitment to Iquitos’ regional population grew out of the company’s investment in conserving the rainforest. They are presently reaching 200 villages with school supplies, water treatment kits to purify the untreated downstream effluent from the city of Iquitos, and on-going environmental education programs for children – a program they created and have been building upon for nearly 20 years.

They now also assist local enterprises, leveraging microloans to create small-scale bakeries and other nutritional food products for sale to local residents. An entire regional trading system has emerged built upon the greater good, according to IE co-founder Steve Cox. He explains, “an economy has emerged that benefits from tourism but is not dependent on it. The villages are now creating an ever growing set of products that can also be sold in the burgeoning city of Iquitos.” Cox calls this a “micro-economic civilization.”

In the Caribbean, Stanley Selengut’s Maho Bay Camps became a network of lodges, which grew to include a state of the art group of apartment-style rooms on Maho’s grounds, called Harmony Studios, which were solar powered and built from recycled materials. Estate Concordia’s Eco-tents and new Eco-studios followed soon after. The Selengut model has always been to create simple and affordable accommodations with new technologies, such as the Eco-panels that he has incorporated into the new Eco-studios.

Maho Bay Camps’ Harmony Studio (Photo by Maho Bay Camps)

As part of their commitment to TIES, Richard Ryel served as Chairman of the Board from 1997-2002; Kurt Kutay and Stanley Selengut were both board members for significant periods of time. These ecotourism pioneers and others shaped a model that has now incorporated a much larger industry, driving innovation and bringing to light the importance of incorporating sustainability principles in all of tourism.

As Stanley, Kurt, Richard and others worked closely with TIES, they demanded that the industry take note of principles that would not only help it be green, but also to grow and attract markets that were seeking experiences that brought them into better harmony with the environment, greater support of wildlife and wild lands, more commitment to local well-being, and a greater understanding of the world they lived in. This legacy remains today.

More about the Author

Megan Epler Wood founded The International Ecotourism Society (TIES) in 1990, the oldest and largest non-profit organization in the world dedicated to making ecotourism a tool for sustainable tourism development worldwide. She was its President & CEO from 1991-2002. Since 2003, Megan’s firm EplerWood International has devoted itself to aiding some of the poorest countries in the world with sustainable tourism development, including the nations of Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Sierra Leone, Mexico, El Salvador, Brazil, and Honduras.

Her published works includes; Ecotourism: Principles, Practices and Policies for Sustainability for UNEP in 2002. She has lectured at Columbia Business School, Harvard University, Wellesley, Duke University, University of Vermont, and The George Washington University. She was named a Senior Fellow at the Institute at the Golden Gate in 2010 where she is developing next generation thinking on the development of tourism as a sustainable economic development tool in collaboration with leading universities, NGOs, and business professionals.