Google “philanthropic travel” and you’ll find a whole lot of links to a company called Exquisite Safaris. Either Exquisite Safaris has a really good SEO campaign going on, an overworked PR team, or a bunch of journalists have just been lazy. What does Exquisite Safaris do? Hmm, hard to tell. Here’s an example they use:

“One Exquisite Safari client asked us what could be done with a $10,000 donation in Zambia,” a destination she wanted to visit with her family. We suggested building a primary school. Nine months later, she brought her family to celebrate the opening of the school and they received the blessings of the village elders. Her children met the village’s children who for the first time could attend school.”

Wow – while I applaud wanting to give away $10,000 to those less fortunate, why would a for-profit travel company based in California do this better than expert NGOs based in Africa?

Okay, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and say they mean well. I really don’t have any problem with companies trying to do good. But not when they purposely mislead the visitors to their sites and their potential clients. Witness the “Philanthropic Travel Foundation.” Wow – this sounds good. How can I get more information? They say “our resources are free to travelers and nonprofit organizations.”

As I click through to find more info, the only options for action are:

1. To register as a philanthropic traveler, click here – and it goes to… Exquisite Safaris.
2. If you represent a humanitarian outreach program that would like to be introduced to philanthropic travelers, click here – guess where it takes you.

This is misleading and unethical. Setting up a website and calling it an educational foundation when all it does is link back to your own company? Really, David Chamberlain, CEO?

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Tags: Exquisite Safaris, Philanthropical Tourism, Philanthropical Travel Foundation

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 4th, 2009 at 3:47 pm and is filed under Organizations & Companies, Philanthropic tourism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.