by Mia Taylor
Last updated: 10:55 PM ET, Thu July 24, 2025
Tourism is a multi-trillion-dollar industry, yet many of the local communities that make travel so meaningful still lack access to its benefits.
That’s the opening line of Planeterra’s new community impact report and it’s worth letting that sink in. The local communities and places around the world that host tourists are often not benefiting from tourism dollars.
But Planeterra, a Canadian-based non-profit that supports community-based tourism models, is focused on helping to ensure that reality changes. And it's doing so with the help of tourism industry heavy-hitters and partners like G Adventures, Iberostar Foundation and the online marketplace for tailor-made tours Evaneos.
Founded in 2003, Planterra realized early on that community tourism could be a powerful,
sustainable tool for impact. By partnering with communities, and connecting them to the travel industry directly, Planterra's helps facilitate opportunities for tourism to create income, cultural revalorization, and environmental protection, Senior Director of Operations & Head of Impact, Kelly Galaski, explained to TravelPulse.
In 2024, the non-profit made significant progress in promoting community tourism endeavors around the world.
According to Planeterra’s just-published Impact Report 2024, community tourism efforts created tangible, lasting change for communities around the planet last year, including:
- Over 30,000 people earned income through Planeterra-supported tourism and climate initiatives
- 191,000-plus individuals benefited from extended impacts like job creation, education access, and improved infrastructure
- 133,340 travelers engaged in community tourism experiences
- 2.65 million trees were grown through nature-positive tourism efforts
As conversations around equity and sustainability in travel continue to grow and generate buzz, the experts at Planeterra say their report offers bit of insight into what’s possible when tourism is designed with communities, rather then travel being designed around communities.
“Community tourism is reshaping how we travel, by ensuring that the people who live in the places we visit are also the ones shaping and benefiting from tourism,” says the impact report.
“When communities lead the way, tourism becomes a tool for self-determination: generating income, strengthening local leadership, preserving culture, and building more inclusive and sustainable economies,” the report adds.
What’s more, according to Planeterra community tourism doesn’t just improve lives—it contributes to Sustainable Development Goals that are also critical in a world being upended by such things as climate change and mass extinctions.
What is community tourism?
Community tourism is a term that may mean different things to different people. But the widely held definition is that community tourism is a model of tourism that ensures the revenue generated from visitors directly benefits the whole community, whether that community is a village or a collective.
In other words, community tourism helps reduce what the report calls “economic leakage,” which is when tourism dollars leave the local economy.
“Unlike conventional tourism, which often relies on imported goods, community tourism prioritizes local providers,” explains Planeterra's impact report.
The statistics from Planeterra’s community partners help illustrate what this looks like in action. In 2024, 66 percent of Planterra's community partners sourced most or all goods from local shops and 51 percent sourced goods from local farms.
“This keeps more money in the community, strengthens local businesses, and often lowers the carbon footprint through shorter supply chains,” explains the report.
At its best, community tourism also helps to protect and restore nature. And Planeterra’s community partners helped to do this in 2024, as well by building systems that work in harmony with nature and investing in its preservation. Those efforts included: 63 percent of Planeterra partners reconnecting people and nature, 59 percent protecting animals and their welfare; 87 percent supporting sustainable value chains, and 59 percent are investing in nature.
These are merely a few of the highlights of Planeterra’s Impact Report 2024. Some of the additional community tourism wins for 2024 thanks to the efforts of Planeterra and its partners and donors included:
- 119 community tourism enterprises connected to travel companies
- $668,488 in grants distributed globally
- 88 communities benefitting from climate and biodiversity initiatives
“Together, we are transforming travel into positive impact, creating
livelihoods, celebrating cultures, protecting the environment, and
uplifting communities to shape their futures,” Jamie Sweeting, president
of Planeterra said.
And at the same time community tourism is generating such positive benefits for people and the planet, it's also gaining traction among travelers. While still widely seen as an alternative way of traveling and exploring places around the world, a growing number of travelers are interested in what community tourism has to offer.
"More travelers today are looking for meaningful, responsible
experiences," Galaski told TravelPulse. "While the term community tourism may not be fully on the
radar of travelers or seen as niche, at its core, it reflects something
universal that travelers seek: genuine, people-to-people connection."
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