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“The choices companies like Intrepid make about climate strategy increasingly shape the choices available to consumers .”

Intrepid Travel has released a new 2025 climate strategy, and it marks one of the most significant shifts in the tourism sector’s approach to carbon emissions in recent years. The company is eliminating carbon offsets, expanding its emissions accounting to include customer flights, and adjusting its 2030 targets to reflect the limits of current technology.

These are not minor tweaks or marketing slogans. They change how Intrepid measures its footprint, how it invests in emissions reductions, and potentially how it designs the trips it sells. Trade outlets like Skift framed the move as a break with industry convention, while Intrepid itself has described it as a “reset” of its climate approach.

For travelers, the implications may not be obvious at first glance. But the choices companies like Intrepid make about climate strategy increasingly shape the choices available to consumers — and over time, they could influence how we all travel.

What Is Intrepid Travel?

Intrepid Travel was founded in 1989 by Darrell Wade and Geoff “Manch” Manchester. Over the past three decades, it has grown into a major global adventure travel operator, operating in dozens of countries and recognized for its emphasis on responsible tourism across small group and adventure travel.

Intrepid is a certified B Corporation and has long claimed to run carbon-neutral operations (its offices allegedly achieved carbon-neutral status in 2010). Intrepid’s reputation for sustainable and community-centered travel means its climate decisions matter — both for the industry and for travelers choosing how they want to see the world. In other words, when Intrepid Travel makes changes, the rest of the industry takes notice.

What Intrepid Is Doing

First, it is scrapping carbon offsets entirely. For years, offsets have been the corporate fig leaf for carbon-heavy industries, yet they’ve been plagued by fraud and questions about permanence. Intrepid is ditching them outright and leaving Australia’s Climate Active program. In place of offsets, it’s committing USD $2 million annually to a new Climate Impact Fund, channeling money directly into decarbonization projects: helping suppliers switch to electric vehicles in India and Nepal, installing solar panels on homestays in Cambodia, and powering its own offices and accommodations with renewables.

Second, Intrepid is finally acknowledging the elephant in the room: flights. Under global accounting protocols, tour operators haven’t had to count the flights travelers take to reach a trip’s starting point. Yet for Intrepid, those flights represent more than 75% of a trip’s total carbon footprint. By bringing them into the ledger, the company is rewriting its own rules — and sending a signal to the wider industry that pretending those emissions don’t exist is no longer acceptable.

Third, the company is resetting its 2030 goals. Rather than sticking to the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), which it admits hinged on unproven technologies like sustainable aviation fuel and a faster renewable rollout, Intrepid is stepping away. Its new 2030 aims are an 8% reduction in carbon intensity per trip and a 21% cut in emissions from its operations (covering offices, vehicles, and accommodations) from a 2024 baseline. Importantly, it admits that absolute emissions may still rise with growth, but argues that lowering per-trip emissions is the more realistic pathway.

What Are Carbon Offsets — and Why Don’t They Work?

Offsets are credits companies buy to “cancel out” their emissions, often by funding projects like tree planting or renewable energy. The problem is that many offsets don’t deliver real or lasting reductions. Forests can later be cut down, projects are hard to verify, and some schemes have been exposed as fraudulent.

For travel, offsets became a way to claim “carbon-neutral” trips while continuing with business as usual. Intrepid’s decision to drop them reflects growing recognition that offsets don’t reduce emissions at the source — and that direct investment in local solutions is more effective.

So, Why Does This Matter to You?

At first glance, Intrepid’s new climate strategy may sound like an inside baseball story — about accounting protocols, targets, and certifications. But it has real implications for the kinds of trips you’ll see and the choices you’ll make when you travel.

The types of trips on offer will shift. Because flights are now included in Intrepid’s carbon totals, the company has a direct incentive to design and promote itineraries that rely less on air travel. That means more emphasis on rail-based journeys, overland adventures, or longer itineraries that make the footprint of a long-haul flight more worthwhile. In practice, you may start to see more “slow travel” options highlighted in Intrepid’s catalog.

Your choices may change without you realizing it. Even if you don’t study emissions data when booking a holiday, the trips that are easiest to find or framed as “best value” may increasingly be the ones with a smaller carbon footprint. In other words, your behavior could shift simply because the industry is reshaping the menu of options in front of you.

Trust is becoming part of the travel product. For years, sustainability claims in tourism have been vague at best. By ending offsets and admitting it won’t meet its original 2030 targets, Intrepid is offering rare transparency. For consumers who are skeptical of greenwashing, this honesty could make the company’s promises feel more credible — and that might become a deciding factor in choosing one operator over another.

The cost of climate action may eventually be reflected in price. Intrepid hasn’t linked its new Climate Impact Fund to higher trip costs, but by investing directly in solar panels, EVs, and supplier upgrades, the company is tying climate action to its operating model. Over time, those investments could influence pricing structures — though the bigger effect may be in how itineraries are packaged and promoted, not in a line-item surcharge.

Your own decisions matter more than you think. Flights are the biggest piece of the travel footprint — more than three-quarters of emissions in Intrepid’s own accounting. That means your choice to combine trips into a longer journey, take the train instead of a short-haul flight, or stay longer in one destination has far more impact than skipping plastic straws at the hotel bar.

What You Can Do as a Traveler

Think about how you get there. Flying is by far the largest part of a trip’s footprint. If you can take a train, bus, or ferry instead of a short-haul flight, the impact is immediate. If you do fly long-haul, consider staying longer to make the emissions “worth” the journey.

Choose operators with transparency. Look for companies that explain how they calculate their footprint and where they invest in emissions reductions. Intrepid is moving in that direction, but you can ask the same questions of any operator before you book.

Support local, low-carbon options. Trips that include locally owned accommodations, public transport, and renewable-powered suppliers not only reduce emissions but also strengthen the communities you visit.

Travel less often, but better. Fewer, longer trips can cut down your overall footprint while giving you a deeper travel experience.

Pay attention to where your money goes. Offsets often make a nice line in a brochure, but little real difference. When your trip funds tangible projects like renewable energy or electric vehicles, you’re contributing to change that lasts.