Changemaker: How Landspot Makes Low-income Tourism Destinations Worth Visiting

Each month we feature inspiring people in our Travel Massive community from around the world who are empowering change in travel. This month we meet changemaker Orlando Franco, founder of Landspot and a part of our Travel Massive San Francisco chapter. Landspot is a digital service platform which helps destination managers to promote and market low-income tourism destinations.

What inspired you to create this initiative?

I have traveled off-the-beaten path in 60+ countries. Many destinations showed limited skills to promote themselves. They have little bargaining power so they are often subjected to insane commissions by travel agencies, or hired with very low wages. I found a need to build a reliable communication channels between remote destinations and the average traveler that wants a more meaningful way to travel and interact with the real local culture.

Is there a unique story of how it came to be?

While working for a project that aimed at understanding how remote connectivity can improve wellbeing in rural areas, we visited a small village in the center of Peru, I became really upset after realizing that the mayor prioritized spending thousands of dollars in a monument instead of solving the water treatment that kept half of the children with water-born diseases. This reinforced corruption, conflict and mismanagement and is common through many regions. This drove me to consider empowering local communities and make them less dependable on mining or government support.

How many people has your initiative helped?

We managed to build our page and contact our first permanent group in central Peru, with the very few resources we had. We will launch the page by February 2016, and hope to help around 25 families in 4 communities, and quickly scale by the first quarter to 200 families in 30 communities.

How can someone help or get involved?

We need people that understand technology better than we do. We have tons of challenges that need to be solved and they are fun. From specific solutions for payment transactions in rural areas, to reinventing the way media content can be leveraged to promote tourism experiences. For travelers the minimum we would ask is to recommend to us which destinations or communities in remote locations need the support we bring. We are on the process of mapping the world’s remote destinations and your experience counts.

If you are interested in launching this initiative in a specific country or region, let us know to find the best way to support you.

What is the most meaningful travel experience you ever had?

It was my very first solo trip a few years ago, a wrong turn on one corner took me to an ‘ugly’ part of the city, which in any other Latin American country is usually a no-go zone, but this time felt different, so I took that path. As I walked deeper into the area, less people approached to me asking for something, and more with welcoming smiles, curious about what I was doing there. I learned a lot about the ‘real’ Cuba and diverse testimonials about what life was in La Habana. I did not realize what this experience meant to me until a few weeks later while reading a NatGeo article about Cuba. The storytelling brought back all the senses experienced on that trip. That is when I knew how much richer it is to be immerse into a place you visit versus watching it from a magazine, a hotel room or a van.

Changemaker is a series that profiles inspiring people making a purposeful change in travel. You can connect with Orlando Franco on Travel Massive, Facebook, Twitter or Project Landspot. If you know of a Purposeful Traveler who should be featured, email us.