Castle Travel and Inca Trail Reservations recognize that the travel and tourism industry is: “essentially the renting out for short-term lets, of other people’s environments, whether that is a coastline, a city, a mountain range or a rainforest.”
We at Castle Travel believe that your holiday in Peru depends upon the economic, social and environmental sustainability of the places you visit and enjoy while on trip, that is why we make payback contributions to ensure tourism always benefits local communities.
We support campaigns in favor of porters' rights, knowing that in the past they used to work in terrible conditions These days an increasing number of travellers want to be more 'people-friendly' too. This is often called 'fair trade'. Castle Travel's Fair Trade in Tourism project takes fair trade one step further, into holidays. This means working with the travel industry to make things fairer for people living in destinations you visit.
We believe fair trade in tourism could be the way forward, and that fair trade will help define a new way of managing tourism which shares its benefits more equitably between travellers, the tourism industry, governments of the countries we visit, and above all, the people among whose homes we take our holidays.
Castle Travel policy regarding porters:
- Appropriate clothing to season and altitude will be provided to porters for protection from cold, rain and snow. This means: windproof jacket and trousers, fleece jacket, long johns, suitable footwear (leather boots in snow), socks, hat, gloves and sunglasses.
- Porters will have a dedicated shelter, either a room in a lodge or a tent, a sleeping pad and a blanket (or sleeping bag). They should be provided with food and warm drinks, or cooking equipment and fuel.
- Porters will be provided with standard medical care.
- No porter should be asked to carry a load that is too heavy for their physical abilities. Weight limits may need to be adjusted for altitude, trail and weather conditions; experience is needed to make this decision.
