Business as a force for good

The most special trips are planned with the help of someone who lives locally, who’ll share with you the secrets to their home country and top tips you didn’t know you needed.

We carefully select experts from all over the world, who are passionate about using their local knowledge to tailor extraordinary, authentic trips. Unlike many travel companies, we put you in direct contact with these partners, so that on top of you enjoying a better trip, more of your money will directly benefit local economies and communities.

Where we began

United by a common ethos of connecting travelers with local experts, German travel platform trip.me (est. 2013) and UK-based TravelLocal (est. 2016) merged in 2021. Re-emerging with combined knowledge, contacts and experience, TravelLocal continues to go from strength to strength to reimagine travel as a force for good.

Purpose statement

TravelLocal exists to connect people to reimagine travel.

Travel shapes economies, ecosystems, and cultures. Done well, it can be a powerful force for good: directing money to local businesses, funding conservation, supporting fair employment, and building real understanding between people. Done poorly, it depletes. It extracts. It leaves communities and environments worse than it found them.

TravelLocal was built to change that.

Our mission is to make locally-led travel the easy, trusted choice by connecting travelers directly with expert partners who live and work in the destinations you visit. Every booking made through our platform supports a locally-owned business, reduces economic leakage, and creates a more meaningful, more honest travel experience.

We aim to measure our impact across four areas:

• People and local economies — how much of your spend reaches local partners and communities
• The environment — our operational carbon footprint, and the sustainability practices of the partners we work with
• Our own team — fair, transparent working conditions and a positive internal culture
• The traveler — the quality, authenticity, and responsibility of every experience we help create

We report on our progress annually through our Impact Report and hold ourselves accountable through our B Corp certification, Travelife partnership, and our commitments under the Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism. We use an external carbon consultancy to make sure our carbon footprint is measured and verified by an independent party.

We are not perfect. We have said that before and we mean it. But we are committed to continuous improvement, honest reporting, and building a business that future generations can be proud of. You can learn more about our impact in our annual Impact Report.

Lobbying statement

Our position on lobbying and political engagement

TravelLocal does not engage in political lobbying and does not make political contributions. We do not seek to influence government legislation or regulation through paid advocacy, trade association lobbying activities, or political donations to any party or candidate.

Where we participate in broader conversations about the future of sustainable travel — for example, through industry initiatives like the Glasgow Declaration, or our Travelife partnership — we do so transparently, in public, and in support of positive social and environmental outcomes for travel and the communities that depend on it.

This statement was last reviewed in July 2026.