As climate change remains high on the global news agenda, community tourism and adventure travel specialist, G Adventures has invested in the restorative travel technology start-up, Reforest.
Based in Brisbane, Australia, Reforest is a digital platform connecting travelers to local communities committed to reforestation and enabling them to give back by having their own trees planted in areas where tourism relies heavily on local environmental preservation. Reforest then provides the travelers with tangible, visible and scientific data regarding the status impact of the tree planting.
Bruce Poon, founder of G Adventures says travelers are increasingly looking for meaningful impact experiences. He says "the preservation of local environments is critical to supporting community tourism as it helps improve air and water quality for local people, and supports wildlife habitats."
"Travelers want to see natural beauty, so we need the world's most beautiful places to be around for as long as possible, and to stay as pristine as possible," he added. "The Reforest platform will help us achieve that goal and help combat climate change, as planting trees is one of the easiest ways to help decrease emissions."
Reforest co-founder Daniel Walsh said in a statement "At Reforest we are leading the conversion of hard climate data, for example kg CO2, into visual, understandable measures such as 'trees planted.' A customer can see the trees a travel company is planting on their behalf and track the cumulative restorative impact of their trip as a result. We apply drone-based footage and satellite imagery to bring groundbreaking tangibility to the restoration projects, and offer powerful impact personalization."
Having G Adventures as an investor he says "provides us with the funding we need to bring our innovative new platform to market. Together we will also create a showcase example of restorative tourism at work as we build the G Adventures' tree-planting program together over the coming months."
"The opportunity to support the transition of this industry to become restorative is compelling for me both in terms of the positive impact we can facilitate and the purposeful business models we can help to build as we do so."
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