Sustainable Travel in Northern Spain

Responsible and Sustainable travel is one of intoAsturias’ core values.

In practice, this means that we aim to maximize the positive effects that tourism can have on individuals, local communities and wildlife in Northern Spain, while minimizing the negative social, environmental and economic impacts. But how do we reach this?

There are three main areas where we put Sustainable Travel in practice:

1. Sustainable Partnerships

We prefer to work with locally owned businesses reflecting the local culture (small-scale hotels, lodges, casas rurales, agrotourism accommodations, restaurants, local artists, and local bakeries).
We work with wildlife guides that are certified in eco-tourism.
We provide Codes of Good Practices about Wildlife Viewing, Hiking and Visiting Heritage Sites to the guides that we are working with.
We are in the process of becoming part of Soy Ecoturista, a Spanish network of tour agencies, accommodations and activities specialized in ecotourism.
We financially support environmental NGO’s, more concretely, SEO Birdlife, which is the Spanish branch of Birdlife International.

2. Educating our travelers

We always include suggestions on Sustainable Travel in Spain to the travel documents we send to our clients. Items addressed include the use of plastic, taking public transport and animal welfare.
We provide tips about locally produced and/or vegetarian and vegan food options at every place the traveler visits.

3. In our office

We reduce waste (e.g. paper) and recycle (e.g. plastic, paper, glass).
intoAsturias´ Environmental Education activity in 2023
We measure our use of energy and water and look for ways to reduce them.
We purchase local products (KM 0) where we can.
We limit the use of small packaging, especially plastic.
We organize an Environmental Education Day for children and their parents living in the vicinity of our office at least once a year.
We communicate on our achievements against our sustainable goals once a year through reporting (see below).
We measure our achievements and monitor our progress using the Travelife Action Planning Tool.

Our efforts towards Sustainable Travel in Northern Spain have led to obtaining the Travelife Partner Award.

Travelife for Tour Operators and Travel Agents is a global leading training, management, and certification initiative for tourism companies committed to reaching sustainability.

We recognize that the natural environment, local (rural) communities and cultures within which we operate are vital to the success of our business. Therefore, we drafted a Sustainability Policy. This policy addresses issues that we have already managed, what we are currently doing, and what we hope to achieve in the future. It defines practices at the core of our product development, operations, and external partner relationships, and it is a work in progress.

You can read our full Sustainability Policy here: