Delfin Amazon Cruises
At the end of 2024, Peruvian river line Delfin Amazon Cruises brought on biologist Gabriela Orihuela as its first formal sustainability advisor. Her charge: a full-scale revision of the company’s standard operating procedures to bring its goals in line with the UNESCO Sustainable Travel Pledge and the joint biodiversity efforts of UNESCO and Relais & Châteaux, of which it has been a member since 2017. In addition to tracking and reporting metrics in areas like energy consumption and waste management, new programs include a recently signed collaboration agreement with three Indigenous communities along the Marañón River, a major Amazon tributary that runs across Peru’s Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve, where Delfin operates. Delfin is also expanding its citizen science opportunities, such as a long-term project led by conservation biologist Joanna Alfaro, who is monitoring the endemic pink river dolphins; guests and locals alike can help log sightings and deploy sensors to record their sounds. Delfin’s refocused sustainability efforts coincide with another exciting debut: the April 2025 relaunch of the fully renovated Delfin I, now equipped with solar panels and more robust plant-based menus, among other updates.
Anderson Expeditions and African Parks
Anderson Expeditions launches new tours to Angola in 2026, becoming one of the first safari operators to offer itineraries in the remote Iona National Park. Located in Angola’s far southwest corner, at the northern edges of the Namib Desert, the park’s spectacular dunes, mountains, steppe, and shoreline are still fairly unknown to travelers: Angola’s decades-long civil war, which ended in 2002, brought immeasurable losses to rural communities and wild lands. As the nation embarks on a new tourism push, African Parks, which has managed Iona since 2019, is spearheading biodiversity restoration—including the reintroduction of the Angola giraffe—and projects with the local Himba and Herero communities. Anderson has long supported sustainable tourism in lesser-traveled (and often, less profitable) destinations, and as part of an ongoing partnership with African Parks, will help promote travel to Iona and Angola more broadly as one of just a handful of operators working in the country. Guests will explore alongside the conservation team, making use of African Parks vehicles and its forthcoming tented camp, anticipated to open in the second half of 2026.
Ciqam Green Solutions
A steadily growing stream of travelers has recently been drawn to the Hunza Valley, in the Karakoram Mountains of Pakistan, known for its Silk Road sites, pleasant villages, and dramatic high-altitude scenery. Turning this tourism potential into opportunity is the local women’s collective Ciqam—its name taken from a Burushaski word meaning “greenery” and “prosperity”—which trains members in skills like carpentry and masonry to build both sustainable incomes and improved tourism infrastructure. The headquarters are within the thousand-year-old Altit Fort, now a museum, which the craftswomen helped restore before it opened to visitors in 2010 (along with the newer Serena Altit Fort Residence at the base of the complex). In fact, Serena Hotels is a regular client for commercial projects: Ciqam’s woodwork can be found in the nearby Hunza Serena Hotel, opened in 2024, and the forthcoming Sost Serena Hotel, a few hours’ drive north near the border with China. In addition to furniture, Ciqam also makes musical instruments (more than 800 since its founding) like the xigeni, a local bowed lute.
