Frequently asked questions

We take care of all the travel details, so your staff can stay focused on what it does best and avoid “mission drift.” Our package will include:

Itinerary development that highlights your cause. Both the destination and your beneficiaries will shine through in a powerful trip proposal.

Customized registration and feedback forms. This trip is yours and is thoughtfully designed to reflect your organization’s look and language.

Promotional materials for the trip. Ask us for samples of our professionally designed brochures.

Registration and billing. Leave the paperwork to us. Your travelers can register and make payments through easy online forms on our website.

All in-country services. From ground transportation and accommodations to top guides and activities, we put it all in place.

Travel concierge services. We’ll counsel travelers with pre-departure materials and recommendations for restaurants, trip extensions, etc. We answer questions quickly, saving you countless hours of calls and emails.

Tour management. You’ll be assigned a professional tour manager on the ground to make sure everything runs smoothly, from start to finish.

Trusted referrals, such as travel insurance, visa applications, and flight arrangements.

Time, we save our clients over 300 hours of work on managing trips.

Yes! We take into account your organization’s needs and procedures by budgeting for free-of-charge staff travel. We’re great at supporting and managing back-office requirements for travel (e.g. contracts, paperwork required for public officials to travel, etc.). We help cut through the red tape, so budget approval processes flow smoothly.

We adapt our pricing and payment structure to your organization’s requirements. Whether you have stringent grant requirements you must follow, or staff costs you would like to subsidize, we will adapt our model and pricing to fit your exact needs.

Safety and security is our primary concern. We will be the first to admit that travel to remote and vulnerable areas of the world can be unpredictable.

Our safety and security plan begins long before a trip commences. For every trip we design, we create a crisis management protocol and emergency plan that is customized to your exact itinerary. Unlike other companies, we also include an expert tour manager to accompany you throughout your trip, who is available 24/7 in case of emergency. Each of our suppliers through which we source our tour managers are vetted for their own insurance and emergency protocols. Our US-based staff are also on-call leading up to and throughout your journey to troubleshoot any situations that may arise. We also closely monitor all countries to which we run trips through government alert systems and close communication with our in-country teams.

We also provide individuals with tips and tricks to remain alert and stay safe when traveling abroad, as well as ask each traveler to sign a waiver.

We’ll help with beautifully-designed promotional materials to send to your potential travelers, such as flyers to get your network daydreaming and checking their calendars. However, the outreach is owned by you. Most of our clients’ trips are not open to the public.

Then, we turn interest into sales by making the registration process easy for prospective travelers. From registration to payment processing, we’ll take out all the guesswork, pain points, and delays.

Elevate’s Social Impact Travel team has pioneered the field of philanthropic travel since 2005. We have partnered with 100s of nonprofits, foundations, and corporations and designed well over 300 social impact trips. We understand the unique needs of philanthropic travel and have helped our clients design meaningful and impactful journeys that successfully showcased their work and inspired their donors and stakeholders.

We have also received accolades for our ethos and mission statement. At Elevate Destinations, we believe that the act of travel is sacred. It has the power to transform lives and landscapes. Our mission is to implement sustainable travel programs that achieve our clients’ goals while empowering local destinations. We create partnerships with a positive impact. We are very selective in choosing our hotels and lodges, and always try to choose locally owned accommodations that pay fair wages and have no prior history of human rights abuses. We carbon offset all of our ground costs and always prioritize animal & marine welfare when planning a trip.

In addition, we are one of only four travel agents that is a member of the The CODE of Conduct for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation in Travel and Tourism.

We are also democratizing travel by sending disadvantaged kids around the world to see the wonders of their own country through our award-winning Buy a Trip, Give a Trip program.

Learn more about the Elevate Ethos.