Exploreo: Your Sustainable Travel Platform
Exploreo is a London-based start-up, soon to expand to Luxembourg - one of the greenest countries in Europe and a hub for sustainability within the EU.
We're dedicated to transforming global travel into a planet-positive experience. Our platform offers nearly 3 million accommodation options, many of which are eco-certified, as well as over 50,000 eco-tours, and will soon include (sleeper) train connections for more sustainable ground transport.
Even for accommodation that isn't yet eco-certified, we ensure that your entire trip is at least carbon neutral - or even carbon negative - by offsetting your travel footprint. We work with environmental experts on tree planting and sustainable projects to ensure that every trip you take contributes to a healthier planet.
Based in Luxembourg, we operate under the strict environmental standards and regulations of the European Union, ensuring that sustainability is embedded in every aspect of our business.
Our mission is simple: to empower you to explore the world consciously, ensuring that future generations and vulnerable communities don't have to pay the price. Join us in making travel a force for good - where every adventure benefits the environment and local cultures.
Join the Exploreo Planet Positive Club. Image by Pixabay.
Who we are:
“We help you explore the world, responsibly”
We understand the innate human desire to explore the world because we are travellers ourselves. Exploreo was founded by a small team of travel industry professionals with a passion for adventure and a deep concern about climate change. During our years working in the travel industry, we grew to recognise that many operators were fixated only on boosting bookings and growing revenues, but paid little attention to the impact that mass tourism was having on the environment and host communities.
We think there is a different way – one that is guided primarily by respect for people and the planet, rather than pure profit. We believe in the power of travel to broaden the mind and foster understanding and respect between different cultures. We don’t want to stop you exploring the world, we want to help you do it responsibly. That is why we created Exploreo, a sustainable travel platform committed to providing eco-friendly accommodation and experiences while offering free and scientifically-formulated carbon offsetting.
We are dedicated to improving the travel industry with innovative ideas for a more sustainable future, and we are constantly devising new concepts to serve this purpose, such as our soon-to-be launched booking facilities for low-carbon sleeper trains and active eco-adventures. Our mission is to provide you with planet positive and community conscious travel solutions, helping you to make informed choices about where to visit and how to minimise your carbon footprint.
Heal our planet for future generations. Photograph at Lac De Serre Poncon, France, by Mael Balland, Unsplash.
What we offer:
Exploreo provides a wide variety of sustainable accommodation, tours and eco-friendly services, as well as a wealth of information designed you help you make responsible travel choices. Our service offering includes:
Eco-friendly accommodation
We offer a broad range of eco-certified hotels, hostels and holiday homes designed ensure a sustainable stay for any budget in any location. Our priority is to work with certified sustainable properties that follow recognised green practices in their construction and operations.
To this end, our system automatically recognises properties that are certified as sustainable by a certification body accredited by the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC). These properties are clearly displayed on our booking platform as eco-certified, providing you with extra confidence that they are focused on minimising their carbon footprint while prioritising the well-being of their guests.
Regardless of the certification status of the accommodation you choose, we are committed to calculating and offsetting the CO2 emissions of your booking in an effort to make every trip carbon neutral or even carbon negative.
Eco-friendly tours
We carefully select our tour operator partners to ensure that they follow environmentally friendly and socially responsible practices. Our worldwide selection of over 50,000 eco-tours covers everything from spellbinding safaris to refined gastronomic experiences.
Whatever activity and country you choose, you can rest assured that your tour operator is committed to sustainability principles. While the emissions from each tour will vary depending on the types of transport and accommodation, we offset these emissions free-of-charge at a standard rate of 10 kg/CO2e per day per person, helping to ensure that your adventure of a lifetime does not negatively impact future generations.
Sustainable sleeper trains
Conscious of the need to provide travellers with low-carbon modes of transport, our upcoming sustainable sleeper train booking service will help you to reduce your emissions and save on your accommodation costs.
The environmental benefits of rail travel are clear; taking a train for a medium-length journey results in around 80% less carbon emissions compared to travelling by car, while choosing a train over a domestic flight reduces emissions by around 86%.
With sleeper train services making a comeback in Europe thanks to the launch of new routes through stunning landscapes, you’ll soon be able to book this scenic service through Exploreo, waking up in your chosen destination safe in the knowledge that you’ve utilised the most sustainable mass transport option around.
Active eco-adventures
Craving adrenaline-fuelled outdoor adventures in pristine mountains but you’re wary of the damage you could cause to the landscapes you long for? You can soon benefit from our active eco-adventure service, which will enable you to indulge your intrepid nature in a planet positive fashion.
This upcoming booking facility will offer exhilarating guided activities like skiing, snowboarding and mountain biking through carefully vetted adventure schools that pride themselves on their sustainable and eco-friendly practices.
Eco-magazine
Our online Exploreo Travel Magazine is packed full of features to promote sustainable travel options and educate readers about how to minimise the environmental impact of their journeys and follow socially responsible practices.
Regularly updated by a dedicated team of sustainability-minded writers, this digital publication includes sustainable adventure stories, destination guides, exclusive offers, reviews of adventure equipment and thought-provoking feature articles designed to draw attention to the possibilities of ethical travel.
Free carbon-offsetting
While making every effort to provide you with sustainable accommodation and tour options, we fully recognise that all journeys will result in carbon emissions. As a result, we go the extra mile by calculating and offsetting the emissions from your booking at no extra charge.
To deliver this pledge, we have partnered with Ecologi, a certified carbon offsetting organisation aligned with recognised global sustainability standards, who manages all of our tree planting and carbon sequestration initiatives.
This partnership means that every trip you take with us is an opportunity to contribute to global efforts to reduce carbon emissions and leave a positive environmental legacy. Read more about our commitment to climate change and our various tree planting, carbon sequestration and pollution control projects on our Climate Commitment page.
Carbon footprint calculator
To complement our free offsetting service, we will soon launch an online tool that will allow you to precisely calculate the full environmental impact of your journey. This carbon footprint calculator will take into account important factors such as transport mode, distance travelled, room size, occupancy and length of stay to give you a detailed estimate of your carbon emissions for the duration of your trip, helping you to make informed decisions about how to reduce the environmental impact of your travels.
Exploreo plants trees to offset the carbon footprint of your holiday. Photograph courtesy of Ecologi and OneTreePlanted.
The Exploreo Story
Meeting the demand for sustainable travel
Our story began in 2021, when a group of like-minded travel industry professionals and intrepid adventurers embarked on a new collective mission. We recognised that global travellers were becoming increasingly aware of the environmental challenges associated with the tourism industry, but the demand for more sustainable travel options was not being reflected in the service offerings of many operators.
While some travel companies made a show of acknowledging sustainability concerns, the responsibility for reducing the carbon footprint of each trip was firmly placed on the consumer.
Looking further into this issue, our research found that 81% of travellers expressed a desire to book sustainable trips, yet 41% found it difficult to navigate the path to sustainable choices. The need to address this gap between supply and demand for sustainable travel was the basis on which Exploreo was founded.
Our commitment to developing and delivering innovative solutions to reduce the environmental impact of the travel industry is the foundation on which we will grow.
Pioneers in planet positive travel
As a major carbon emitter, the travel industry needs to do more than just make small gestures to make a meaningful difference in the global fight against climate change. At Exploreo, we reject symbolic efforts. Our ultimate goal is to be carbon negative, which means not only offsetting future pollution, but also striving to clean up past emissions.
By focusing our efforts on reforestation, afforestation and carbon sequestration, we are taking on the challenges that many larger companies are neglecting. Exploreo is committed to providing transparent, accountable and effective sustainability solutions at no extra cost. Although our journey is just beginning, we aim to be the leader in sustainable and socially responsible travel and to help heal our planet.
The silver fern plant's opening leaf influenced the Koru design in Māori art. The Exploreo logo also uses this design. The Koru symbol represents new beginnings, harmony, eternal movement, strength and peace.
Our vison and mission for Planet-Postive travel
Our vision: A world where travel benefits people and the planet, ensuring a sustainable future for generations to come.
Our mission: To empower every traveller with eco-friendly, community-conscious travel solutions that make sustainable travel accessible and impactful for people and planet.
Our core values:
People and Planet before Profit
We will always place people and the planet at the heart of our business. Our priority is to provide travellers with easy access to the information and opportunities they need to make responsible choices, while offering convenient and effective carbon offset solutions.
Privacy Protection
Data privacy and security are top priorities for us. We ensure that your information is protected with strong encryption and stored on sustainable and secure servers in privacy-friendly Switzerland. Our employees are trained in ethical data practices, and we only share information with trusted travel partners to ensure have a safe and seamless journey from the moment you book.
Total Transparency
We are committed to transparency in every aspect of our service offering and operations. When embarking on a journey with us, we will provide you with clear information about the certification status of your accommodation and the offsetting measures connected to your booking. Through our partnership with Ecologi, you will be able to learn about the impact of your carbon offsetting actions through this virtual forest, helping you to locate each sponsored tree and see how much CO2 it has reduced.
Inexhaustible Innovation
Our business is built on a relentless commitment to innovation. Recognising the sustainability challenges and associated supply gaps in the global travel industry, we have assembled a team of experts dedicated to finding innovative solutions. Our focus is on combining cutting-edge technology and human ingenuity to continually enhance the customer experience, improve our business processes and enhance our service offering to address environmental concerns and meet the needs of the modern traveller.
Go where you don't know. Go Exploreo. Photograph by Jamie Fenn, Unsplash.
Join us on our sustainable journey
Although Exploreo is already firmly established as a leading sustainable booking platform, we are still in the early stages of our mission to transform the travel industry and we invite travellers, partners and investors to join us on us on our journey.
Read our eco-magazine for inspiration on your next sustainable destination. Browse our accommodation and tour listings to find sustainable options that meet your needs. When you're ready, book with us and together we can make a difference in the global fight against climate change.