The Steppes Travel Fund for Female Guides
Tackling tour-guide gender imbalances through training and education
While the World Federation of Tourist Guide Associations estimates that roughly 80% of guides globally are women, workforces in certain regions and industries have steep gender imbalances. In Sri Lanka, for example, women make up less than 10% of the country’s tour guides; in Botswana, less than 5%. Steppes Travel, a tour operator and Certified B Corporation, is working to change that. Since it launched The Steppes Travel Fund for Female Guides in 2023, it has supported the education of more than 160 women training to become guides in Sri Lanka, India, Colombia, Peru, El Salvador, Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. This year the fund has paid out approximately about $50,000 to its recipients so far, prioritizing applications from underrepresented communities and from countries where guide roles for women are less common. The fund is backed by the company’s Steppes Fund for Change, which in turn is funded by a per-person fee of 115 pounds (about $156) for every Steppes Travel trip booking and donated on the traveler’s behalf.
Cayuga Collection
Redefining off-season travel in Central America to create lasting, systematic change
In Central America the travel window between May and November is historically the low-occupancy period, when the region is at its hottest and most humid. But it’s also when the wildlife is most active and thriving. These months are worth celebrating, asserts Cayuga Collection, a clutch of seven environmentally minded hotels across Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, and Guatemala, founded in 2023. The collection kicked off its Wildlife Season initiative in 2025, encouraging travelers to visit Costa Rica in this so-called offseason, when the rainforests are most lush, ripe fruits are drawing out keel-billed toucans and scarlet macaws, red-eyed tree frogs and glass frogs are emerging in the rain, baby turtles are hatching, and humpback whales are basking in the area’s warm waters. Thanks to the Wildlife Season, Cayuga has begun to smooth out its occupancy curve and has increased bookings by 31%, which has allowed for year-round employment of its staff, over 95% of whom are local to the region. This distribution of travelers across the calendar acts as a pressure valve. Instead of concentrating thousands of visitors into just a few months, wildlife disturbance and trail use are distributed more evenly throughout the year, allowing nature to regenerate and rest more, well, naturally.
