Elevate Destinations

Experts in socially responsible luxury travel. We design travel experiences that support conservation and local communities without skimping on comfort.

Make a long-term positive impact

Sharing yourself is travel on a whole different level

Elevate Destinations launched the Urgent Service Travel program shortly after the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti. The purpose of this program is to facilitate travel that can provide communities with funding, resources, and human capital while enabling concerned citizens to engage in urgently-needed service work.

Elevate’s Urgent Service Travel division connects volunteers to second response disaster relief that is environmentally and socially sustainable. Trips have benefited local communities and eco-systems, as well as provided volunteers with fulfilling and meaningful experiences.

Urgent Service trips are designed to have more than a short-term impact in the destinations we travel to. Elevate has identified the following principles as tenets for successful and sustaining impact:

  • Sustainability: Understand the environmental, economic, and social benefit for communities. Sustainable development is a norm of the development world. When we bring volunteers into the development world, we prepare them for direct contact. It is important to ensure that the work being done provides well-rounded and aligned support of sustainable development goals.
  • Impact: Ensure that the programs supported have plans for positive impact in the long run.
  • Vetted Partners: Work with well-established organizations that have track records of success, transparency and long-term commitment to the community.
  • Fundraising: In addition to the hands-on work that volunteers do on the ground around education and rebuilding, each traveler must raise a minimum of $500 as a component of going on the trip. We have raised thousands of dollars for community projects and have logged thousands of volunteer hours on the ground. Many of our volunteers have made their way back to our Urgent Service destinations or continue to support projects.

A profound outcome of this program is that our volunteers come back transformed. The life changing impact of Urgent Service trips on our travelers has been recognized by organizations such as National Geographic Traveler magazine, which gave our Jacmel trip the designation of “Tours of a Lifetime” in 2011. In addition to coverage in NatGeo – our urgent service trips have been recommended by Afar Magazine, the LA Times, and Travel + Leisure, among other prominent publications.