Posted by World Vegan Organisation Nepal
OUR HIMALAYAN VEGAN FESTIVAL FRIENDS BECOME THE FIRST VEGAN TOUR COMPANY IN THE WORLD EVER TO BE NOMINATED FOR A WORLD TRAVEL AWARD!
June 24, 2021
Our Himalayan Vegan Festival friends at Vegan Travel Asia by VegVoyages are nominated for “Asia’s Responsible Tourism Award 2021”. They are the first vegan travel company ever to be nominated in the 28 years of World Travel Awards!
The World Travel Awards was established in 1993 to acknowledge, reward and celebrate excellence across all key sectors of the travel, tourism and hospitality industries. Today, the World Travel Awards is recognized globally as the hallmark of industry excellence.
“We are very grateful and see this as a wonderful opportunity to help raise awareness that traveling vegan is very much a part of traveling responsibly. This is a subject that is left out of almost all responsible, sustainable and eco-friendly travel checklists and discussions, and we hope to change that,” said Zac Lovas, Co-founder of VegVoyages. “We are competing with some big companies, so the odds may be slim, but we’re determined to give it a good fight, for the animals, the environment, the sustainability of tourism, and the planet.”
The negative effects caused by animal agriculture and exploitation remains left out of most responsible and sustainable travel discussions. A significant part of responsible and sustainable travel is by definition to lessen the negative impacts on local environments and resources, and to make the increasing amounts of tourism sustainable for communities. A plant-based diet checks all those boxes.
For VegVoyages, traveling vegan is not just limited to the vegan meals they serve their guests. They also avoid all forms of animal exploitation including no animal rides, no zoos, no “selfie ops” with animals and no animal shows. In addition, when they bring their guests to explore national parks and protected marine life reserves – they make sure to do so in a meaningful, educational, and conservation-oriented, and minimal footprint manner, by collaborating with frontline conservationists and wildlife protection organizations enabling their guests to make a positive impact and contribute in a beneficial manner to the eco-systems they are visiting.
According to the United Nation World Tourism Organization, there were 1.5 billion tourists’ visits worldwide in 2019; this includes almost 11 million foreign tourist arrivals in India alone. On a planet of almost 8 billion people, with declining food and water resources, traveling vegan would seem like a substantial way to lessen our travel footprint on community and environmental resources.
“Like with climate change, no one in the responsible, sustainable and eco-travel circles wants to talk about including animal agriculture and the negative affects it has in the discussion. Most people just don’t want to talk about it, but we’re determined to make it be an important part of this discussion, because traveling vegan is part of traveling responsibly, sustainably and being more eco-friendly,” said Suresh Sharma of Kathmandu, Nepal who is a partner at VegVoyages.
Shouldn’t responsible travel be about making travel sustainable and non-exploitive for humans and animals alike? Let’s help the first vegan tour company to be nominated for a World Travel Award raise the awareness and bring this important conversation to the next level by casting your vote and sharing this voting link…
For your vote to be counted, once you submit your vote, the World Travel Awards will send a “verify email address” email to you. Please click “verify your email address” to have your vote counted.
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ABOUT VEGAN TRAVEL ASIA BY VEGVOYAGES:
Vegan Travel Asia by VegVoyages is a team of 5 friends from 4 different countries (Nepal, India, Indonesia, and USA) and 4 different faiths, who came together to combine their diverse backgrounds and mutual passion for animals, people, cultures, travel and storytelling to create cultural tours that focus on bridging cultural gaps through cultural immersion and local interaction with local communities while enjoying 100% local vegan food along the way. Starting with 3 trips in India 17 years ago, they now organize up to 27 trips a year in 8 different countries.
For more information on their commitment to responsible travel, visit: