About Travara

The Modern Guide to Conscious Travel

Travara makes it easy to travel better. We find and vet the stays, tours, and brands where your money does the most good, then tell you exactly why they made the cut. Every trip should leave people and places better off, and none of it should ask you to give up comfort or style.

Our Name

Travel + vara, the Sanskrit word for “the best.” Travara means the best of travel: the kind that does the most good.

How We Choose

Every Place Earns Its Spot

Before anything appears on Travara, it has to pass on three fronts. Our vetting follows the global standards for sustainable travel, and we’d happily send a friend to every place we feature.

Footprint

It Treads Lightly

Energy, water, waste, and how guests get there. We look for places that measure their impact and keep shrinking it, not ones that hang a towel sign and call it a day.

Culture

It Honors the Place

The food, the craft, the language, the architecture. The best stays and tours open a door to the place they’re in rather than recreating somewhere else.

Community

It Keeps Money Local

Who owns it, who works there, and where the money goes. We favor businesses that hire, buy, and invest close to home.

The Founder

Michelle Arellano Martin

Michelle founded Travara in 2018 after years of seeing how much good travel can do for a place, and how often it does the opposite. She also saw a gap: she couldn’t find a travel publication devoted entirely to conscious travel, so she built one.

Her path here ran through more than 20 years in global development and media, including leading global communications for a Fortune 500 company’s social impact division. Along the way she became a travel journalist and earned a professional certificate in sustainable tourism from the Global Sustainable Tourism Council.

Today she splits her time between California and Donostia-San Sebastián, and every place on Travara is one she’d send a friend to. See Travara in the press.

What We Value