Our hand-picked list of Asia’s most responsible accommodation options

At EXO Travel,we believe the privilege of living and operating amongst natural marvels and cultural heritage comes with the responsibility of preserving it for generations to come.

Furthermore, we strive to ensure that our business is beneficial for both the destinations we operate in and the communities living there. As such, we strongly commit ourselves to responsible tourism practices: minimising negative impacts and increasing positive ones, always keeping in mind how our activities and offerings affect the places we’re visiting.

As one of the region’s longest-standing, most reputable destination management companies, we believe our reputation helps us to influence the choices of consumers, practices of suppliers and the development of destinations. This unique position enables us to contribute to sustainable development and the protection of environmental and cultural resources in each of our destinations. Keeping responsible travel at the heart of our company, we observe the following seven sustainable commitments:

We commit to our people

We fight against corruption

We respect human rights

We care about the environment

We involve our supply-chain

We support community involvement & development

We care about our customers

Our Sustainability Teams

We have active, engaging sustainability teams in six of our destinations: Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. In each of these destinations, our teams work tirelessly towards achieving our goals of sustainability. Each team’s main mission is to ensure that our responsible travel policy is implemented and to guarantee compliance with our Travelife Certification for Excellence in Sustainability in Tourism.

Our sustainable practices don’t just stop with our team members; each EXO office observes sustainable management practices as well, where energy and resources are carefully monitored, carbon offset programs are applied and sustainable purchasing is implemented. To further our commitment to sustainable travel, we put a strong emphasis on sharing information on responsible practices with our tour guides through training, our partners with our sustainability assessment process and with travelers through our `Tips for Responsible Travellers Booklet‘ published by EXO Foundation.

Sustainability Across the Chain

Just how far do our sustainable practices reach? All the way to our supply chain. EXO Travel encourages its hotel partners to actively implement and promote greater environmental, cultural and socially responsible conduct. Local community resources and biodiversity are to be respected, local sourcing is preferred and any use of endangered species is strictly banned.

Within our contracts, we include standard sustainability clauses and refuse to work with suppliers who are not complying with our fundamental responsible travel requirements (e.g. respect basic human rights, fight against child labour, sexual exploitation of children, etc.).

The Sustainability Assesment

To identify hotel partners that are truly committed to sustainability, our supplier assessment process follows strict guidelines. Self-assessment surveys are sent to our accommodation partners to prepare for site visits, and our sustainability teams conduct detailed onsite inspections to check the social and environmental responsibility of our hotel partners. Among the many questions included, we evaluate:

Has the hotel created good working conditions for their people and do they treat them fairly?

Does the hotel take actions to support the local community and promote local culture and heritage?

Does the hotel implement measures to minimise consumption of natural resources?

Does it train its people on environmental management and contribute to local conservation projects?

We also check how hotels communicate on responsible tourism with an emphasis on how they encourage their guests to be responsible tourists.

The purpose of these actions has two elements. First, we aim to raise awareness along our supply chain about what it means to be sustainable by following a step-by-step assessment that hotels can clearly understand. Inspecting a wide range of hotels allows us to share best practices with other hotels to encourage further sustainable development within our destinations.

Second, we reward our partners who have shown commitment to social and/or environmental sustainability by strongly promoting them with clear information about the actions they are undertaking to run a responsible business.

Each hotel is rated on a scale of 1 – 3 for being Eco-Friendly and Socially Aware: ‘1’ being basic, ‘3’ being the best.

Our most outstanding sustainable hotels here: