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Bucket list holidays are usually defined as the pampering kind. Ones where your batteries are recharged, or you reconnect with family and friends, while being relieved of the mundanity of the every day.
But, when luxury is repeatedly served to you as a social construct (whether poolside, in starry restaurants or the squishy deck of a yacht), you instinctively start to chip away at its definition. The hype fades into sickly banality and you scramble for purpose beyond the floating breakfasts or long, languid dinners with all the theatrical trimmings.
“Spoken like an ungrateful, wildly insouciant travel journalist,” I hear you say. While that may be the case, the trips that have tattooed themselves to my memory are the ones with a sense of mission, strong characters and intriguing projects that focus the mind between massages and mojitos. Not the ones that fulfil the toes-in-the-sand, couple-crimson-sunset clichés (as appealing as both sound when living in London’s changeable climate).
So, it’s the hotels that are ‘doing something’ rather than simply mobilising a corner of a Private Equity portfolio by virtue of their existence, and better still, hotels and teams making a positive impact on our planet, from local level to worldwide initiatives.
There are those paying lip service to the latest ethical buzzwords, but then there are those handful of hotels, movements and travel operators deftly proving how luxury travel can be reconciled with moral responsibility, off-setting the excess and, bluntly, being decent humans.
Combining education and philanthropy with other-worldly destinations, magnificent architecture and high design can make the very notion of luxury more palatable. Philantourism is a win-win for all.
Here are five travel-with-purpose initiatives to consider this year.
The World Monument Fund’s Travel Program
Become a member of the World Monument Fund and you’ll be invited on a series of trips that delve into the heart of the charity’s stellar work.
Previous trips include those to Siem Reap in Cambodia, with private dinners at an Angkor temple, Peru’s remote Chachapoyas for lessons in pre-Incan culture, or less-accessible archeological sites in Egypt with group dinners on the Nile. These Monumental Journeys are crafted with exclusive access to WMF sites in mind, as well as private homes and museums.
There’s also the other-wordly dinner settings, the off-grid experiences and the chance to meet others who share the same passion for monument and architectural conservation. Members unable to commit to a full ten days can hop onto one of WMF’s Escapades — two-three day trips with thrilling access to buildings and cultural events, such as Venice’s Architectural Biennale or Paris for VIP level access to the Paris Photo photography fair.
Sol y Luna: hotel, foundation and home
Urubamba and Machu Picchu and Relais & Chateaux
With its blooming gardens, Hispanic colonial style casitas and old world interiors, Sol y Luna appears a Sacred Valley oasis with all the well-heeled traveller creature comforts. Located just outside the village of Urubamba between Cusco and Mcchu Picchu, the charming Relais & Chateaux member hotel has philanthropy and local impact woven into the lavishly low-key picture.
Owners Petit and Franz moved to Peru in the 1990s, and while opening Sol y Luna as a luxury hotel, felt compelled to mitigate the impact of extreme poverty surrounding them in Peru’s rural communities through care and education. While easily considered idyllic by tourists, many of the poor rural communities (and their children) in the sacred valley are plagued by violence, alcoholism and abuse.
On realising that true impact needed to go beyond just the school, Petit and Franz opened the Sol y Luna Home as a safe haven for students suffering unspeakable violence or neglect, then in 2015, a centre for disabled children.
The school, home and foundation soon worked in tandem with the hotel, offering guests the opportunity to visit and spend time with the children at the school or the orphanage, with a donation included in bookings but the chance to donate towards children’s food, education, therapy and housing, and even to sponsor a child on an annual basis through the school and home.
The hotel (and its trailblazing owners) are now considered a world-leading example of reconciling luxury, culture-focused travel with philanthropic, community-led projects.
Snow Leopard sightings in Tibet with Journeys With Purpose
If you’ve grown weary of the token ‘reef revitalisation project’ as some big-money-backed Maldives Resort that popped up in three months, or the greenwashing in Europe’s hipster city hotels, have a browse through Journeys With Purpose’s programmes and far-flung escapades.
Offering privileged engagement with world’s most ambitious conservation projects, often in remote corners of the world, and interacting with its local culture, this travel company is a bona fide force for good. The theory goes that if people are immersed in these vibrant, other-worldly ecosystems, they’ll soon fall under their spell and feel compelled to protect them and spread the word.
Among a long list of life-shifting trips, this December’s expedition to Ladakh in search of the elusive snow leopard with National Geographic Explorer, filmmaker and photographer, Matthias Klum, is a real standout. An intimate group will embark on an 11-night adventure with Klum and Expedition leader, Behzad J. Larry, navigating the ‘roof of the world’ on foot. As well as meeting local communities that inhabit this untamed landscape, guests can hope to spot golden eagles soaring overhead, Eurasian lynx and Tibetan wolves, then hunker down in carbon-neutral guesthouses for a well-deserved snooze.
The new Hosted Journey will take place from 3 - 14 December 2025. Prices start from US $15,215 US per person for 11 nights, all-inclusive, based on two sharing. Includes expert guiding, photography masterclass, full board accommodation, one between two Swarovski BTX 95 spotting scopes and a 10 per cent donation to the High Asia Habitat Fund. Excludes international flights. journeyswithpurpose.org
Giraffe Conservation Safari in Namibia with Explorations Company
A travel company with meaningful foundations, Explorer Company has recently launched an nine-day immersive Giraffe Conservation safari through Namibia’s rugged, heart-stoppingly beautiful landscapes.
Guests will be led by two giraffe experts with decades of experience between them, and work alongside a team from the Giraffe Conservation Foundtion (GCF), journeying across the northern parts of Namibia’s wild, unsullied landscapes in search of Angolan giraffe and other desert-adpted wildlife.
Where most safari guides extoll the virtues of conservation and thumb through wildlife books for facts, the team leading this safari have a depth of knowledge and experience that’s typically reserved for science rather than tourism. It’s a privileged, first-hand insight into the nuts and bolts of conservation work in this part of Africa, and a must for those infatuated by these graceful, prehistoric-looking animals. In step with the company’s knack for merging luxury with philanthropy, guests will stay in top-drawer lodges along the way, with all the light-footprint design, exquisite food and creature comforts suspended in beguiling stretches of African wilderness.
A minimum of four people required (maximum eight); at a cost of £13,280 per person (price may vary depending on numbers); from 23-31 July 2025. explorationscompany.com
Rewilding Scotland: stay in the thick of Europe’s largest conservation project
As Scotland’s largest landowner, billionaire, Ander Holch Polvsen, (owner of Bestseller and majority ASOS shareholder) and his wife, Anne, have put set an ambitious rewilding project in motion across their 13 vast estates. These span some 220,000 incredibly scenic acres from Loch Ness and the Cairngorms to Sutherland’s wind-whipped coastline. So the impact of their initiative to restore lost habitats, rewild ecosystems and support local communities with direct income will be felt in a way that governments and councils can only dream of.
Labelled ‘WildLand’, this 200-year vision includes introducing endangered species such as beavers and ptarmigan, and dizzying levels of replanting and restoring.
The regeneration doesn’t stop at the great outdoors though. The bothies and great baronial piles peppering the power-couple’s land are either being restored to their former glory or restyled with a Scandi-Scot flavour, where guests can hole up in with friends and immerse themselves in this herculean (and at times, contraversial) Caledonian project – and more generally, in the soul-stirring beauty of the Scottish Highlands.
