Fairaway.de Makes a Point to Travel Green and Fair

Yvonne Küpper, purposeful traveler and Marketing Manager at Fairaway, helps others to make the best of their travels using a green and fair approach.

Through their platform fairaway.de they connect individual adventure travelers directly with travel professionals in Asia, Africa and Latin-America.

Yvonne is part of our Travel Massive Berlin chapter and we are excited to share her experiences as a purposeful traveler with our online community.

What is your initiative about? Who does it help?

Fairaway connects travelers with travel professionals in Asia, Africa and Latin-America. The travel experts are Europeans who have been living in the destination for various years or locals. Each trip is 100% tailor made and therefore unique.

Travellers visit special places off the beaten path and stay in small scale accommodations. There is a strong focus on personal contact with the locals. We believe that travelling makes the world even more beautiful – based on the fact that people and environment are treated with respect.

Our mission is:

Better places to live in, and better places to travel.

In this way travelers will have an authentic experience and the local people benefit from the income of the visit.

What inspired you to create this initiative?

We started our platform two years ago in the Netherlands under the name Better Places. We noticed there is a lot of interest for personal and authentic travel.

What did we miss? The contact between small projects and local people in the countries. We believe that travelling can make the world a better place. Due to our experience and expertise, we were able to establish personal contacts with local projects and want to provide a platform for them.

How is your startup changing the future of the industry or helping to make travel better?

Not long ago Thailand closed the Koh Tachai Island due to negative effects of tourism. We want to reduce this negative effects and strengthen the positives of tourism. All our partners are working according to the Travelife criteria. Fairaway measures and offsets all CO2 emissions of the trips – not only the emissions of the land-only trips, but also the flight which is needed to reach the destination. We are a social enterprise and we are actively involved in initiatives to measure the social and economic impact of travel.

Can you share an inspiring story when you felt your project was most fulfilling?

Nel and her family told us, for example, that Liesbet, the local travel expert, made it possible for them to see the Quetzal, a special kind of bird. It was a big wish of Nel’s son and he will always remember this journey. We want to stimulate our travelers to get out of their comfort zone during their holiday and really experience the country.

Do you have any tips for aspiring do-gooders who want to give back or start their own social project?

Just start. Sometimes it sounds silly, but the most important thing is to make your plans real and believe in what you do. You can start small, with small steps and see where you’re going to. Don’t just think too much about it, do it!

Purposeful Traveler is a series that profiles inspiring people or projects making a purposeful change to the way we travel. You can connect with Yvonne and Fairaway on Travel Massive, Facebook and Twitter. If you know of a Purposeful Traveler who should be featured, email us.