5 Getaways That Reinvent Eco-Tourism

Hotels and glamping sites touting sustainability practices and nature-based activities have proliferated throughout the United States in the last decade, finding financial success by offering guests a let-nature-nurture-you wellness experience.

But many of these destinations have targeted only luxury travelers, and focused on an ethos of self-improvement. Now a growing number of hospitality entrepreneurs are working with or employing naturalists and scientists to reinvent eco-tourism by championing an outward, altruistic kind of outdoor therapy — regenerative tourism initiatives such as trail building and oyster reef restoration opportunities — as well as climate-change education.

“Having sustainability or ‘eco’ experiences perceived as ‘cool’ may help shift cultural perspectives in the long run,” said Leah Thomas, a climate justice activist and the author of “ The Intersectional Environmentalist.” Ms. Thomas says engaging travelers just one time in habitat restoration work or an environmental class can teach them to care about the planet.

Here are five affordable retreats that aim to inspire community activism and a more sustainable lifestyle.

1. Maple Grove Hot Springs & Retreat Center

At the Maple Grove Hot Springs & Retreat Center, in southeast Idaho, guests can enjoy a soak in one of six thermal pools, but many also sign up for invasive plant removal, trail development or tree planting.

“We want guests from all walks of life to strike that perfect balance of rest, work, learning, thinking, sharing, laughing and exploring. The marriage of those creates a very transformative experience,” said Jordan Menzel, the founder of Maple Grove.

Powered by solar and hydro sources, the off-grid, 45-acre Maple Grove is currently working to become the world’s first B Corporation-certified hot springs, Mr. Menzel said. (The designation requires a certification of social and environmental performance). The retreat, opened in 2019, has stone shelters, yurts and cabins (nightly rates from $170), as well as walk-in tents and camper-van sites ($45). The center provides kayaks and river tubes at the beach, and concerts and outdoor movies by the pool, as well as foraging hikes, workshops on composting and managing a home garden, and cold plunges in the river.

To honor the Northwestern Band of Shoshone people who made their winter home on the Bear River, Maple Grove hosts a quarterly storytelling event led by a Shoshone tribal elder. Mr. Menzel also recently launched a conservation organization, Oneidanarrows.org, to stop a proposed dam on a nearby waterway.

2. Hike Clerb

In 2017, after feeling ostracized at several national parks, Evelynn Escobar, a Black and Indigenous second-generation Guatemalan American, created Hike Clerb, an intersectional women’s hiking club and nonprofit committed to equitable access in the outdoors. (Clerb, she said, is slang referring to any type of club.) Ms. Escobar designs day and overnight experiences that balance healing in nature with land restoration projects and activities that encompass cultural heritage and decolonization education.

Evelynn Escobar, a Black and Indigenous second-generation Guatemalan American, created Hike Clerb in 2017.Credit...Hike Clerb

Ms. Escobar has hosted 77 free and low-cost meet-ups so far where participants have gathered not only to hike — and clean up trash along the trail — but to bike, surf, fish, farm and more. In California, the Hike Clerb community planted 100 oak trees in the Santa Monica Mountains Recreational Area and worked with Heal the Bay nonprofit to clean up the historically Black beach, Bruce’s Beach, now known as Manhattan Beach.

“The concept of these trips is bringing Black and brown facilitators and participants together to restore a place,” Ms. Escobar said. “As we are taking care of the land, it’s taking care of us.”

In fall 2022, Ms. Escobar created a two-night overnight retreat called Night Clerb at Ace Hotel Palm Springs ($300). This year and next, Night Clerb events will take place in Puerto Rico, Alaska, Hawaii and Yosemite National Park.

“People are craving opportunities to visit places as stewards versus tourists,” Ms. Escobar said. “When you feel connected to a place and have respect for it, you respect yourselves in that place, too. In that way, it’s a luxury experience.”

3. The Tides Inn

The Tides Inn sits on the Carter’s Creek tributary of Chesapeake Bay, which produces around 500 million pounds of seafood annually. Since before the hotel opened in 1947, pollution and over-harvesting have been decimating the population of oysters, a keystone species for all marine life. In summer 2021, Tides Inn completed a $3.6 million shoreline restoration project that has since allowed oyster reefs to make a comeback, with help from a steady stream of guests.

The inn’s resident ecologist, Will Smiley, has been leading volunteer experiences for the last three years, including a popular one that repopulates baby oysters.

“As of January 2024, we have grown and planted over one million oysters,” said Mr. Smiley, noting that sea horses are returning to the area, a great bio-indicator. By planting oysters, which feed on the creek’s overabundance of algae (partly because of pesticide runoff), the inn is also helping revive sea grass beds that are known to remove excess nutrients and maintain a healthy ecosystem.

The Tides Inn boardwalk, which curves around 13,000 feet of shoreline, was designed as an outdoor nature museum.Credit...Kate Thompson

The 70-room resort (nightly rates from $249) offers activities on and off the water, from kayaking and paddle-board yoga to pickleball and a pool and spa. But the heart of the inn is its boardwalk, which curves around 13,000 feet of shoreline and was designed as an outdoor museum with signs about the restoration project, local species and native plants. Family-friendly programming includes birding walks, beekeeping, blue crab ecology tours and pollinator garden lessons with the inn’s horticulturist, Matt Little. An off-site volunteer excursion ($200 per person), benefiting the river nonprofit Friends of Rappahannock, pairs a picnic with planting trees and wetland grasses.

“Just make your world the world,” said Mr. Smiley as he walked along a new 6.2-mile nature trail on the inn’s rewilded golf course. “If you make small daily changes like curbing waste and ditching plastic, you’ll feel good.”

4. Anupaya Cabin Co.

“I think the climate crisis can cause people to feel such paralysis, like it’s almost too little, too late,” said Shannon MacLaggan, who created Anupaya Cabin Co., with her husband, Pete, as a wilderness retreat and incubator for climate action in 2021. “There are massive esoteric concepts about how to tackle global warming, but this is something tangible and applicable.”

The 12-acre property (nightly rates from $232), along the upper Ottawa River, has a lodge, private beach and eight renovated cabins, each with a kitchen, grill, fire pit and porch views of the Laurentian Mountains. Anupaya invites every guest — inner-city youth groups receive a 50 percent room discount — to join the environmental movement in whatever way they can.

That might mean participating in cleanups through the hotel’s One Pound Promise initiative (60,000 pounds of waste have been collected so far), foraging workshops, planting fruit trees and berry bushes, or learning to grow and harvest food in the garden, where guests are often found pulling invasive plants and picking salad ingredients. Visitors can also work on trail management projects with the local Friends of Rivière du Moine nonprofit, or do trail maintenance at nearby Four Seasons Conservancy. “The whole reason we started Anupaya is to remind people how a part of nature we all are,” Ms. MacLaggan said. “If you love something, you feel a sense of responsibility toward it.”

Anupaya is introducing more formal volunteer opportunities in 2024. The Sustainable Saturdays initiative, to run from May to November, will offer free two-hour educational sessions on composting, starting a medicinal garden, raising chickens and more.

5. Fir Haven Retreats

This August, the restoration ecologist Kieron Wilde plans to welcome the first guests to Fir Haven, a 20-acre, plastic-free property an hour outside Portland, on the eastern end of the Columbia River Gorge. Fir Haven will have A-frame cabins with kitchenettes (nightly rates from $115), platform tent sites ($50), E.V. chargers and an informal educational lab for environmental stewardship.

Mr. Wilde aims to create experiences “for people to be immersed in conservation,” he said, like planting Gerry Oak trees, both as a fire suppression tool and to support a rich native habitat.

Fir Haven will offer a menu of volunteer projects and field trips for guests, working with nonprofit partners like Trail Keepers of Oregon

“It was time to double-down on the non-extractive, regenerative travel movement, and inspire people to leave a positive impact together,” said Mr. Wilde, who previously worked for the Bureau of Land Management and started First Nature Tours, an eco-tour operator. Mr. Wilde said there will be plenty of traditional wellness activities, including yoga and forest bathing, as well as biking the Columbia River Gorge Scenic Highway or hiking at nearby Rowana Crest Viewpoint.