SUSTAINABLE TOURISM

“Traveling with respect for people, their culture, and their environment” is our motto. Atypique Voyages is committed to responsible tourism that promotes meaningful encounters with the local population while respecting local development and environmental protection issues.

Our ambition is wide! We aim to become a reference through our destinations for sustainable tourism. We put our hearts into our work!

Tourism is one of the healthiest ways to bring foreign currency, essential for the proper functioning of these countries. However, it is crucial that all tourism stakeholders adopt practices oriented towards sustainable tourism, respectful of the environment, and beneficial to the widest amount of people.

Our goal is to minimize our negative impacts on natural and cultural environment, especially in Sri Lanka. As an inbound travel agency, it is our responsibility to act. Thus, we promote trips that support cultural and natural heritage conservation, and try to slow down, on our own scale, the damage caused by mass tourism.

To achieve this, we hand down the values of Atypique to our staff from their arrival and emphasize their crucial role in developing more sustainable tourism.

Additionally, we are committed to selecting our partners based on their social and environmental commitments. We trust them to support us in this tourism transition. At Atypique, each partner must follow the guidelines of our sustainable policy.

Finally, raising our travelers’ awareness concerning sustainable development issues has become a priority. Through our trips, we aim to leave an imprint on the hearts of our travelers, as well as those they meet along the way!

Because we believe that responsible tourism is the only way to ensure a sustainable future for both the country and its population, Atypique Lanka commits to:

• Offering quality service to our travelers and developing a range of experiences based on discovery and encounters while maintaining safety and quality as foundational principles.
• Acting against all forms of discrimination, as well as against corruption, forced labor, and for the protection of children.
• Reducing the environmental impact of our operations both in our offices and during our trips.
• Selecting service providers who share our approach and adhere to the various codes of conduct we have developed.

Travelife is not just another certification; it is a European certification recognized internationally, offering a training and certification program based on the criteria of the United Nations Global Sustainable Tourism Council. It provides real legitimacy to our approach.

After committing to the certification process in 2020 and several unsuccessful attempts (unfortunately never completed due to lack of time), we have dedicated ourselves full-time to the certification.

From April to October 2024, Atypique Voyages engaged a recruit specifically for obtaining this certification.

A certification involves an external audit that analyzes many aspects of our practice. Thus, the Travelife certification involves a comprehensive process and counts 229 criteria, including 150 mandatory ones: a real meticulous task!

This certification encourages us to formalize what we have already been working towards informally for several years. It is with great pleasure that we seek solutions for more sustainable and relevant tourism.

We are pleased to announce that our efforts have paid off, as we obtained the Travelife certification’s ‘Partner’ status in September 2024. We are now just one step away from reaching the highest level, ‘Certified’, which we will pursue by 2025. However, sustainability at Atypique does not stop at this certification; if we want to contribute to better tourism development, we must commit to the long term.

For more information, download our sustainable policy here, and take a look at our short presentation on sustainability.

For any questions regarding our sustainable practices, feel free to contact Marjorie, our director and sustainable coordinator: [email protected].