Okinawa Story: Curating ethical travel for visitors to Okinawa

The Okinawan booth at the SDGs section at the Tourism Expo pointed us to their main Okinawa counterparts. Okinawa is the only one actively pushing the term “ethical travel” at the expo, a commendable move among a few others cutting the sustainability cake right. Remember also that the first two days were trade shows making Okinawa one of the few promoting sustainable travel alternatives to counterparts.

The Okinawa booth offered visitors multiple workshops to participate in. As part of the decor, the organizers brought in garbage found on the Okinawan beaches to show visitors, even transporting the actual sand to allow visitors to see through and experience how dirty we have polluted the ocean.

We sat down with Nobuhito Kuroshima from the Okinawa Convention & Visitors Bureau as we delved deeper into their concept of ethical travel. After all, different organizations may define “ethical” differently.

That is when Kuroshima introduced us to “Okinawa Story.” Okinawa Story is an online platform that shares recommended facilities and food places, promoting the seasonal beauty of Okinawa tourists.

After several years of personally interviewing various brands around the Okinawan Islands, his team has compiled a convenient list of ethical brands (totaling 60 brands at the point of discussion). Just like Zenbird.Life, the selected items on Okinawa Story are curated by the editorial team.

More importantly, Kuroshima shared with us how they think about ethical travel. Each brand is evaluated through five criteria: to protect the environment, to care about humans and animals (this was indeed rare, as Japan is a little behind in the discussion of protection of animals), to preserve culture and traditions, to promote fairness and transparency, and to be fun! Within those categories, the brands need to fulfil a certain level to be considered ethical.

Perhaps the biggest impression we got was their insistence of FUN! As Kuroshima shared, “A place can be highly sustainable and matches our definition of ethical travel. But if it is not fun in some way, it is difficult to convince a traveler to visit.” It certainly makes us lots of confidence about Okinawa Story’s selection.