Southern Cone Journeys

Southern Cone Journeys is a small tour operator specializing in trips to Chile and South America. Our staff lives and works in the region, but has also lived in other places (United States, Australia, Costa Rica, among others), therefore we combine a good knowledge of both the culture of our destinations and that of our clients.

All tourism potentially has environmental, social and economic impacts on the destination involved. We, therefore, design and operate our trips in a responsible manner, aiming to promote sustainability on each of these three levels. This set of guidelines is intended to help companies, customers and local suppliers recognize their common responsibilities as well.

Environmental Sustainability

- We make sure that our type and scale of tourism is appropriate to local conditions and does not overload local infrastructure. 

- We seek to minimize water and atmospheric pollution from any specific tourism development we use. 

- We dispose of litter responsibly and encourage recycling where possible. 

- We give guidelines to our clients on how to act in the natural environment. 

- We aim to work closely with all relevant local bodies and authorities to help preserve or improve the environment and deliver a long-term benefit for the host community.

Social Sustainability

- Where possible we encourage local involvement and provide financial support for economic, social or environmental projects that will benefit the local communities. 

- We operate our trips in a way that encourages positive cultural exchanges. 

- We attempt to provide an insight and understanding of the host culture and community to our clients so that they can gain more from visiting them. 

- We advise our clients to ask for permission before taking photos of people. We don’t promote giving money for photos as it can encourage a begging culture.

Economic Sustainability

- We aim to use local suppliers wherever possible and to generate incomes for local communities by visiting locally owned lodging, restaurants and shops. 

- We seek to build links with locally based projects that aim to support and produce a positive impact on local communities. 

- We advise our clients about local bargaining customs and give guidelines to reasonable prices where possible.

Responsibility of our Suppliers

- We have made all of our suppliers aware of this policy and work with them to develop their own.

Responsibility of our Clients

- We provide all clients with a suggested Code of Ethics to supplement advice on the destinations they will visit.

Responsibility at the Southern Cone Journeys Office

At our office, we strive to minimize our impact on the environment and reduce the amount of energy we use. Some measures we have in place are:

- We recycle all paper 

- We only turn the heat on when absolutely necessary 

- We use local suppliers whenever possible 

- We encourage the use of public transport by staff, and 

- We emphasize the importance of having a paper-free office 

- Our brochure is only printed when required and we always review the materials used and available technologies (i.e. recyclable vs. recycled) with our suppliers whenever we produce printed materials.