Sri Lanka, 20 MAY, 2017 – Triip.me signed the United Nations World Tourism Organization’s (UNWTO) Private Sector Commitment to the Global Code of Ethics for Tourism in a signing ceremony today in Sri Lanka. Triip is the first Singaporean company to do so.

Formulated in 2011, The Commitment has been signed by 513 companies and associations as of May 2017. Its main objective is a promise by signatories to focus on issues such as human rights, social inclusion, gender equality, accessibility, and the protection of vulnerable groups and host communities in the course of their daily business.

“For Triip, this is both an honor and a serious commitment. Solving the issues outlined by the Code of Ethics for Tourism is why we exist. From day one our business model has created barrier-less access to the global tourism economy, creating thousands of jobs for local guides around the world as a result. Since then, we’ve broadened our impact scope to include working with hotels and other travel providers, leveraging cooperation to further sustainability, cultural and environmental protection, and also protect against the standardisation of destinations,” said Hai Ho, co-founder of Triip.

Founded in 2014, Triip is an impact-travel company dedicated to bringing together local experts and global travelers to create authentic local experiences. As a sharing economy platform, Triip enables passionate locals to become Triip Creators, i.e., create their own private tours to share their passion with travelers, earn money and make new friends – while also offering travelers one-of-a-kind local cultural experiences with real people. The whole process is facilitated by their website and mobile apps. Currently, there are 6,000 local experts in 650+ cities in over 100 countries around the word using Triip, and about 70% are women from low-income countries. By autumn this year, Triip will launch an integration with Booking.com to also offer hotel bookings through the platform alongside the private local tours, thus giving traditional lodging in 227 countries access to authentic, indie tour experiences for the first time ever. Further, a significant percentage of each hotel booking will be automatically given to pre-selected local and global impact partners.

Triip is also extending its impact mission to other business leaders through its CEO/Founder Type-A Retreats in Bhutan.

“As the world’s only carbon negative country, Bhutan is renowned for its practical emphasis on sustainability and happiness,” said Ha Lam, co-founder of Triip “Therefore Triip is exposing as many businesses leaders as possible to this unique country, so that they, too, can more practically build a more sustainable and happy world through their ventures.”

With this new mission as well as its expansion to 700 cities in 2017, Triip hopes to build a network of 1000 Impact hotels within the next two years.