Helping protect unique destinations in Guatemala!

As a chief Experience Officer with G Adventures for the last 3 years I have had the opportunity to see really astounding places in Central America. But I have also seen the destruction that uncontrolled tourism can do in some of these amazing places.

When I became Planeterra’s Ambassador for Central America, we agreed that this particular issue was the most important one to attack, so for our Big Fundraising Campaign this year, we decided we wanted to focus on helping the communities of Lake Atitlan.

Lake Atitlan is a beautiful lake in Guatemala surrounded by Volcanoes and several Mayan settlements. It's one of the most visited places in Central America, and also one of the most threatened. We have been working for the past year with a local association of tourist guides committed to the development of San Juan La Laguna, a small town located on lake Atitlan.

This lake has suffered from the negative impact of tourism for several years and San Juan is a community that strives for sustainable development. They want to use tourism as a tool to improve the community without compromising their culture.

Currently this association offers a Homestay program for our travellers at G Adventures, in which they offer tourists the chance to get immersed in the local culture by sharing time with several Mayan families. This service has been a big success for the community providing a more steady income to the majority of the town.

However, at the moment the families involved in the guesthouse program often have to sacrifice their own space to be able to provide this service. In the spirit of supporting these Mayan families to grow their local business we launched a project to help.

The Mayan Community Home Stay Project was created to support the improvement of the Guesthouses so that they can have a better ability to host guest without having to compromise their personal spaces as well as develop opportunities for new families to host travelers.

With this initiative we want to offer help with house improvements, construction and refurnishing of some of these modest guesthouses as well as giving them the opportunity to take part of several training courses on customer service and home stay management.

After several meetings with people from this inspiring community I have realized how important it is for them to preserve their culture and to help the community as a whole. This community is a great example of how tourism can have a positive impact if managed the proper way, and how it can preserve unique destinations.

My mission is to find more places like San Juan around Central America and show the world how the Tourism and Travel industry can really be beneficial for developing countries if it is managed in the correct way.

Lets put the travel economy to work!

You can help by generously donating to our Mayan Community Homestay Project. Donate Now!