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Celso and Alejandro talking on the beach of Taquile Island, Lake Titicaca, Puno, Peru. Image courtesy Impactful Travel.
What a ‘welcome’ is worth
A Q&A with Alejandro Teus Honig, co-founder of Impactful Travel.
Briefly …
Community-based tourism promises that the benefits of travel can remain with the people and places we visit. But what makes that relationship last – and how can we tell whether it is working?
When Alejandro Teus Honig arrived in Peru in 2002, tourism was already reaching rural communities around places such as Lake Titicaca. Development organisations, government programs and private companies were helping communities create experiences for visitors, providing training and sometimes building infrastructure. What was less certain was what happened when that support ended.
It was a problem that would help shape RESPONSible Travel Peru, which Alejandro co-founded in 2009. The company spent the next 15 years connecting community-based tourism initiatives with travellers, before becoming Impactful Travel in 2024 and expanding its approach into Ecuador, the Galápagos and Costa Rica.
For Alejandro, the distinction between a tourism project and a lasting tourism economy remains fundamental. It also raises harder questions about an industry increasingly comfortable with the language of sustainability. Who decides what visitors are allowed to experience? Where does their money go? How do we know whether tourism is strengthening a community rather than changing it for the benefit of outsiders?
We asked Alejandro what meaningful community-based tourism looks like once the promises are stripped away.
When RESPONSible Travel Peru was founded in 2009, you identified a lack of long-term support for local communities involved in tourism. What were you seeing on the ground that convinced you tourism needed to work differently?
What struck us was that tourism was already reaching many rural communities, but the benefits were often short-lived or unevenly distributed. There were plenty of well-intentioned initiatives led by non-government organisations, development agencies, government programmes or private companies. A community might receive training, infrastructure or support to create a tourism experience, but once the initial project or funding ended, there was often no long-term connection to the market.
That was the gap we kept seeing. A tourism project does not create impact simply because training has taken place or infrastructure has been built. There has to be a functioning connection to the market, travellers have to arrive, and ideally that demand has to continue over time. That changed the way we looked at responsible tourism. We realised that the real challenge was not simply to “help” communities, but to build relationships that could last and connect them with a consistent tourism economy.
Over the years, our role has increasingly become that of a bridge; understanding what communities actually want from tourism, developing experiences together and then connecting those experiences with travellers who value them. For me, responsible tourism starts there. The community should not be an attraction added to an itinerary. It should be a partner in deciding what tourism looks like.
“The community should not be an attraction added to an itinerary. It should be a partner in deciding what tourism looks like.”
Impactful Travel says sustainability should be measurable and tangible. What do you actually measure? How can a traveller know that their visit has created a meaningful benefit for the community rather than simply being marketed as responsible tourism?
This is one of the most difficult questions in sustainable tourism, because “impact” has become a very easy word to use. What we can measure directly today are the outputs of our work: the number of reservations, travellers and overnight stays or community-based experiences, as well as the economic value directed to local families, associations and businesses. That tells us something very concrete about demand, participation and where the traveller’s money goes. But we have also learned to be careful not to confuse those outputs with long-term impact. The next step is to understand the outcomes: whether demand is repeated year after year, whether tourism becomes a more reliable source of income and, importantly, whether the communities themselves consider the relationship beneficial.
Not everything meaningful can be reduced to a number. Community ownership, cultural pride and the ability to say “No” to certain forms of tourism matter enormously. So rather than claiming that we automatically create social impact, we prefer to ask how tourism may be contributing to longer-term change.
For travellers, transparency is still the best test. Ask who operates the experience, who receives the income, how long the company has worked with the community and, whenever possible, ask the hosts themselves whether tourism is bringing the kind of benefit they want.
Community-based tourism inevitably brings outsiders into places whose culture and daily life are part of the attraction. How do you determine when tourism is supporting a community and when the presence of visitors is beginning to change the very thing they have come to experience?
There is always tension here, and pretending otherwise would be unrealistic. Tourism changes places. The important question is whether the community has enough control over how much tourism it wants, what it wants to share and what should remain private. One of the biggest mistakes in community tourism is assuming that travellers should have access to everything simply because they have travelled a long way to get there. We try to reverse that logic: the community determines what the visitor can experience, not the other way around.
Small groups are particularly important to us because they allow genuine interaction without overwhelming daily life. We also try to avoid turning normal activities into performances created exclusively for tourists. But the community’s own perception is just as important as anything we can observe from outside. Do people still want visitors? Do they feel tourism is improving their opportunities? Are they comfortable with the way their culture and daily life are being shared? Over time, those answers tell us much more about whether tourism is supporting wellbeing or beginning to damage the very thing travellers have come to experience.
Alejandro sailing on Lake Titicaca with a hostess from the Ccotos community, Puno, Peru. Image courtesy Impactful Travel.
Impactful Travel has expanded from Peru into Costa Rica and Ecuador, including the Galápagos. How much of the model developed in Peru can genuinely be transferred elsewhere, and how much has to be rebuilt around the priorities of individual communities?
The principles can travel, but the model cannot simply be copied. What we have learned in Peru gives us a framework: work with local partners, listen before designing, favour small-scale experiences, keep economic value locally and build long-term relationships rather than transactional ones. Those principles are transferable.
The assumptions behind the model must be tested again in every destination. Ecuador, the Galápagos and Costa Rica have very different environmental, cultural and social realities, and even two communities within the same country can have very different expectations of tourism.
So, expansion for us cannot mean taking a Peruvian product and reproducing it somewhere else. It means starting again with the same questions: What already exists here? What does the community want? What should tourism contribute? What should remain private? And what should tourism not change? This is one of the most important lessons we have learned. Responsible tourism should be difficult to standardise. If every destination starts looking and behaving the same, we have probably done something wrong.
Alejandro receiving a floral bath from Abigail, a hostess from the Guamote community, Ecuador. Image courtesy Impactful Travel.
For someone travelling independently through Latin America, what should they look for when trying to distinguish a genuinely community-based tourism experience from one that is simply using the language of sustainability?
I would encourage travellers to be curious and ask very simple questions. Who owns the experience? Who guides me? Where does my money go? How long has the operator been working with this community? Was the experience designed with the community, or simply around it? You can often learn more from those answers than from a sustainability certification or a page full of responsible language. I would also look at the experience itself: smaller groups, locally owned accommodation, local guides, locally sourced food and meaningful time with people are generally positive signs.
Continuity matters too. A genuinely community-based experience is not just about involving local people once; it is about building a relationship that brings recurring demand and allows the community to decide how much tourism it wants and how it wants to participate.
Most importantly, look for dignity rather than performance. A good community-based experience should feel like an exchange between people. You are welcomed into somebody else’s place and way of life; you are not purchasing access to their culture. For me, the best responsible travel experiences leave you feeling that you were a guest, not a consumer.
To learn more, visit Impactful Travel, and read more about its approach to community-based tourism in Costa Rica.