Ecotourism Editing and Proofreading Services

Ecotourism makes a claim that the visitor cannot verify: that this trip is better for the place and the people in it than the alternative. The customer paying a premium for that has no way of checking where the money goes, whether the lodge employs locally at a decent wage, whether the conservation levy funds anything, or whether the certification on the website means anything. The sector has attracted enough loose claims that the informed customer is now sceptical, which makes precision commercially valuable rather than merely honest.

We edit what ecotourism operators, lodges and responsible travel companies produce — sustainability and responsibility claims, local benefit and community contribution documentation, conservation levy and donation explanations, certification and accreditation claims, wildlife viewing codes and guest guidance, carbon footprint and offsetting statements, employment and procurement policy documentation, community partnership agreements and their public summaries, trip descriptions and itineraries, guide training and briefing material, impact reporting to guests and partners, funding and grant applications, and marketing copy making environmental claims. Our editors check that a claim can be traced to a number.

The local benefit claim is the one that most needs evidence and least often has it. "We support the local community" appears on almost every operator's website and means anything from a genuine revenue-sharing agreement to buying vegetables in the nearest town. We write these so the claim is expressed as arithmetic the reader can follow — what proportion of the trip price stays in the country, what stays in the district, how many staff are from within twenty kilometres and what proportion of the payroll they represent, what the conservation levy is per guest and what it paid for last year with the item named; so anything not locally sourced is acknowledged, because a lodge importing most of its food is normal and denying it is not; so certification is named with what it actually assessed, since schemes vary from rigorous audit to a paid logo; and so the comparison is honest about the alternative, because a flight is a flight and an operator that addresses it directly is more credible than one that reports a net-positive footprint nobody believes.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including community agreements, financial information and partner material. We are editors rather than sustainability, conservation or certification advisers, and we offer no view on environmental impact, carbon accounting, certification schemes or any claim's validity. What we can do is make claims specific and traceable to something a sceptical reader could check.