Organizers

About the Center for Responsible Travel (CREST)

The Center for Responsible Travel is a unique non-profit multi-disciplinary research institute devoted to increasing the positive global impact of responsible tourism. CREST functions as a bi-coastal institute, with offices at Stanford University and in Washington, DC. Recognizing responsible tourism’s potential as a tool for poverty alleviation and biodiversity conservation, CREST’s mission is to use policy-oriented research and programs to design, evaluate, improve, and promote sustainable practices and principles within the tourism industry.

The Center was founded in 2003 by two pioneers in the field of ecotourism who saw a critical need for intellectual rigor behind the growing responsible and ecotourism movements. Dr. William Durham, professor of Anthropology at Stanford University, and Dr. Martha Honey, author and then-director of The International Ecotourism Society, met at a Stanford event, agreed on the need for a new approach, and launched CREST shortly thereafter.

CREST’s programmatic and research areas include sustainable coastal tourism development, travelers’ philanthropy, certification for tourism businesses, impacts of cruise tourism, indigenous rights and tourism, and research on ‘green’ trends in the broader tourism industry.

CREST views responsible tourism as a development and conservation tool that has the potential to address some of the most complex and compelling social and natural conservation issues of our times. Among the questions CREST addresses through its research, field projects, publications, and conferences are:

How can we decrease the negative social and environmental impacts of tourism?
How can tourism truly contribute to the survival of endangered flora and fauna?
How can tourism help to empower local communities and alleviate poverty?
How can we build tourism businesses that are environmentally responsible, socially beneficial, and profitable?

In essence, CREST seeks to transform the way the world travels.