Fair Trade Vacations - Helping create sustainable economies...one vacation at a time!

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At FairTrade Vacations, we love to travel! We love to travel to remote, untouched, pristine, tropical, exotic destinations. Unfortunately, these are exactly the places we do the most damage as tourists. Dollars of third world nations are devalued. Many of these nations have been plagued with well-intentioned, but largely unfulfilled promises for aid. Alas, in nearly each country there has been more ruin than help. As tourists, we are typically sheltered from these harsh realities. We are oblivious to abysmal living conditions, poverty, poor waste disposal and many other tragic situations.

We were founded based on very simple principles:

Everyone needs a vacation! We ensure that all workers at all resorts are paid a living wage. We determine a living wage to be enough to provide food, housing, a few toys, five day work weeks with two days off in a row and at least two weeks off per year to do whatever the heck they want.
We all deserve a beach to play on! Our beach front resorts have exclusive, lovely, amazing beaches. In fact, at least two of them, one is for you. The other one is not for you. It is maintained by us and provided for the local community as a public park.
We buy local! We believe that if there is a way for local supplier to meet our need, we should (and do!) purchase from them. We do believe there are times to import (not every nation makes 400 thread count sheets). However, every nation has marvelous local produce and a unique local flavor that you are in that country to see. Why would you want to go somewhere exotic only to see things you can buy at your local discount chain? Made in Taiwan is fine if you are actually in Taiwan...in Jamaica, we prefer the local bananas - yum!
If we burden the system, we must contribute to the system! Local infrastructures, youth centers, wastewater treatment plants, schools...the list is long. Our presence impacts this community. We should pay taxes. We should have to contribute a fair amount to keeping each destination as a place we want to come back to. We should not try to avoid our civic duty simply because we are on a vacation.

Ecological disasters, poverty, hunger, violence - give me a break, we are on vacation! Why don't we try giving a break to the places kind enough to offers us such a lovely vacation? We get to vote every time we spend a dollar, so why not spend your vacation dollars in a way you know makes this world a slightly better place?

Our mission: Helping create sustainable economies...one vacation at a time!

Coming soon to your favorite paradise...