Eco Team champions eco and adventure tourism with Travelife Partner Status

Creating exceptional experiences that transform guests’ lives is a tall order. Going beyond, blending authentic tailor-made journeys while maintaining a healthy balance of caring for the land, wildlife and people is a fitting ethos for Sri Lanka’s oldest and largest diversified eco adventure company, the Eco Team.

Recognising Eco Team’s unique pioneering spirit and commitment to measurable sustainability, Travelife awarded the company partner status a year ago. As Eco Team celebrates the first anniversary of this unique achievement, it remains the only eco and adventure tourism entity in the country to be accredited as a partner by Travelife.

“At the core of our success is a vision that puts guests, our land and communities at the heart of our business. In our quest for a holistic approach to sustainable tourism the Travelife partner status helps us improve our own practices, while serving to inspire travellers and all those involved in the industry to support responsible and ethical tourism,” said Eco Team CEO Anuruddha Bandara. 

Travelife is a leading training, management and certification initiative for tourism companies that are committed to sustainability. It provides companies with realistic sustainability goals, tools and solutions to implement positive change within their businesses and supply chains. Travelife is managed by the Travel Association in the UK and by European Centre for Ecological and Agricultural Tourism (ECEAT), ECEAT Projects – a not-for-profit organisation based in The Netherlands.

While striving to help improve standards for responsible travel and sustainable tourism, by obtaining Travelife partner status, Eco Team also ensures stringent standards on various aspects of the business. This mainly includes focusing on providing service delivery to guests with minimal negative impact on the environment and communities. Travelife consistently evaluates all aspects of service provision to ensure standards are met.  Consciously seeking ways to positively impact the environment, the Eco Team has also pioneered intuitive initiatives such as introducing glass bottles at all at all Tented Safari Camps that Eco Team manages, recycling aluminium and metal, paper and cardboard and PET bottles. 

While demonstrating meaningful and lasting benefits for the natural environment and communities that surround its operations, Eco Team’s signature blend of natural luxury camps Mahoora and Big Game are included within this accreditation. Mahoora was the first to receive this status in the first quarter of 2017.

Notably, Mahoora and Big Game Camping have remained carbon neutral since early-2012 while Eco Team’s three main sites of Mahoora and Big Game camping located at Wilpattu, Yala and Udawalawe aim to be fully-solar powered by October.

Founded two decades ago, as a pioneering eco and adventure tourism company, Eco Team has today emerged as a specialist, changing the industry landscape tourism through many other niche segments.

Eco Team’s unique brands such as Mahoora.lk, Biggamesafaris.lk, Ahaspokuna.com and Sri Lanka Day Tours together harmoniously provide a signature blend of experiential travel than cannot be matched; its associated Experiential Journeys (www.exjourneys.com), Beyond Boundaries Global (www.beyondboundariesglobal.com), Fly Sri Lanka (www.flysrilanka.lk) and Sri Lanka Wilderness Foundation, the company’s CSR arm (www.srilankawildernessfpyndation.org) are other subsidiary entities that contribute towards redefining the journey.