These colourful icons represent our Conscious Travel Rating. The rating should give you immediate visibility and clarity in what way and to what degree a company is conscious. We focus on three pillars of consciousness: the environment (the green leaf), animal welfare (the brown animal paw) and human welfare (the red heart resting in a hand).

Information on conscious companies in a city you might not know that well

With our Conscious Travel Rating we want to provide transparent conscious information. As a tourist you might not be familiar with how sustainable a hotel is or whether a restaurant serves organic food and vegetarian dishes. Even as a local it is sometimes hard to keep up! All our recommendations meet our first criteria: they are great places to go to! On top of this we provide you with information on the efforts a company makes on one or more of the three pillars:

Conscious of the environment

This pillar consists of everything that has to do with sustainability: saving energy and water, seasonal and local vegetables, organic vegetables and clothing, recycling, reducing carbon footprint, reducing food waste, et cetera, et cetera.

Conscious of animal welfare

This mainly involves vegetarian and vegan food and organic meat. But we also give credits to companies that do something positive for animal welfare, by supporting projects that help animals in need, for instance. Or companies that raise awareness against animal cruelty. It can also cover businesses that are animal/pet friendly.

Conscious of human welfare and social aspects

This pillar comprises of companies that sell Fair Trade products and respect the human capital in the whole production process and supply chain. And that are actively looking for improvements. This is a tricky and difficult pillar to monitor, but we do our best to inform you the best we can. Furthermore this pillar includes companies that help people that can’t make it in our society by themselves. These companies make a substantial effort to give them a place (back) in society.

The five different rating options

The rating is based on information that we’ve researched and on the info we get from the companies we recommend. We know that there is a fair bit of subjectivity in the rating. We try to be as transparent as possible in why we give the company the conscious rating we do.

There are five different rating possibilities for each pillar:

  1. Not applicable Greyed out Conscious rating icons for environmental awareness
  2. Non-existing, but applicable Empty coloured Conscious rating icons for environmental awareness
  3. Good One coloured Conscious rating icon for environmental awareness
  4. Better Two coloured Conscious rating icons for environmental awareness
  5. Best Three coloured Conscious rating icons for environmental awareness

A more comprehensive explanation on what we mean by conscious travel and our rating system can be found on the page “How to read our Conscious Travel Rating”.