Our Approach
Choosing where you stay
is choosing who you support.
Where you stay shapes what you leave behind: in an ecosystem, in a local economy, in a place someone calls home. Responsible stays should be as easy to find as beautiful ones. That's what Positive Escapes is for.
Sustainability
What we actually look for.
Every stay we feature is reviewed through nine criteria, covering what it leaves behind in an ecosystem, a local economy, a place. Together, they map to all 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Wildlife
Stays that look after what's around them, whether that's a coral reef, a forest or a wetland. Active conservation, no animal exploitation, and care for leaving the place better than they found it.
Community
Traceable impact on the people who live where guests travel. Fair employment, local sourcing, investment that stays in the community long after check-out.
Energy
Renewables, passive design, audited reductions. We look at what's actually installed (solar panels, natural ventilation, third-party audits) and how it compares to conventional alternatives.
Water
Rainwater harvesting, reduced consumption, and care for the local sources that guests and communities both depend on. Water is never just a guest amenity.
Food
Local sourcing, on-site growing, seasonal menus. Supply chains we can trace. Kitchens that know where their ingredients come from and are happy to talk about it.
Waste
Less plastic. Less waste. We look for stays that have done the work of reducing what they throw away: kitchen scraps, packaging, single-use anything.
Transport
Getting there is part of the footprint, and we're upfront about it. We share what each stay does to reduce the impact once you arrive: shared transfers, on-site mobility, honest trade-offs.
Materials & Construction
Local materials, traditional craftsmanship, low-impact methods. We look at how a building was made and whether it belongs in its landscape.
Transparency
The clearest signal of all. Properties that openly share what they do, and what they're still working on, show a kind of honesty that is rare in this industry.
Travel mindfully.
No stay is without impact.
On each stay page, we share what's worth knowing before you arrive, so you can make informed choices when you get there.
Reading the signals
How to tell real sustainability from marketing.
A certification is a starting point, not a verdict. The bodies worth knowing, GSTC-recognised schemes like EarthCheck, Green Globe, Travelife and Green Key, signal that someone has looked. What we check is the rest: outcomes that are measured, dated and traceable, and a property willing to say what it hasn't solved yet.
Red flags
Vague words, no evidence. "Eco-friendly", "green" or "sustainable" with no measured data to support them: no figures, no dates, no source.
One gesture, dressed as a programme. Towel reuse or the removal of plastic straws presented as an environmental strategy, while energy, water and waste go unmentioned.
Offsetting instead of reducing. Carbon offsets used to replace real cuts in consumption, rather than to complement them.
A badge with no substance. A certification named but never dated or verifiable, or logos stacked to imply more than the property actually does.
Silence on the hard parts. No mention of the transport footprint, the local water table, or what's still unsolved. Real transparency includes the limits.
Regenerative travel
Stays that give back
more than they take.
Regenerative travel goes beyond reducing harm: it restores ecosystems and strengthens communities, measurably. Stays in our selection already work this way — and because regeneration is easy to claim and hard to prove, each stay page describes only regenerative practices that are documented and sourced.
What regeneration looks like in our selection
Rewilding. Former tea, cinnamon or coconut plantations replanted with native rainforest, land deliberately left to return to forest, protected wildlife corridors where displaced species come back.
Marine restoration. Turtle conservation programmes run with wildlife authorities, house reefs monitored year after year, dive resorts that fund working marine research labs.
Water and soil. Groundwater recharge wells, greywater recycled into watering holes for wild animals, kitchen scraps composted back into the land that grows the food.
Communities that gain. Children's schooling funded in full, learning centres open to surrounding villages, local artisan enterprises built to outlast the hotel itself.
Photos · © Samanvaya
