Regenerative Travels: The Green Footprint Project

Earlier this month, we travelled to Lanzarote to take part in the first transnational meeting of the Erasmus+ project Green Footprint, a collaboration focused on one simple but important idea. Helping young people travel better.

GeoCamp Iceland is proud to be involved in the project as an associated partner, working alongside Visit Reykjanes, who lead the project, along with partners from Italy and Spain. Together, we are exploring how tourism can shift from being part of the problem to becoming part of the solution.

The setting for the meeting could not have been more fitting. Lanzarote and the Chinijo Islands UNESCO Global Geopark is often described as an “open-air museum”—a landscape shaped by volcanic forces, rich in geological heritage, and at the same time increasingly under pressure from tourism. That balance between value and vulnerability framed much of our discussion.

A key challenge discussed was the growing gap between how places are experienced and how they are presented online. Social media and the so-called “influencer effect” are driving visitors to fragile, often unprepared locations, sometimes with very real consequences for nature and local communities. At the same time, travellers are increasingly relying on digital tools and AI to plan their journeys, which raises an important question: who is shaping that information?

The Green Footprint project is our attempt to step into that space

At the heart of the project is the development of short, engaging video content designed to guide behaviour in a practical way. Not lectures, not rules, but simple, clear messages rooted in real places. From the Icelandic side, we introduced the idea of “Travel like a Guest”. It’s not complicated. If you wouldn’t walk across someone’s garden at home, don’t walk across fragile moss. If a place feels dangerous, it probably is. And if you can leave a place a little better than you found it (even by picking up one piece of litter) you’re already part of the solution.

During the project meeting in Lanzarote we visited volcanic craters, coastal cliffs, lava formations, and cultural sites. Places where the challenges we were discussing are already visible. These field visits grounded the project in reality and will directly shape the content we develop moving forward.

For us at GeoCamp Iceland, this project connects closely with what we already believe: that education, storytelling, and real-world experience are some of the most powerful tools we have to shape the future of travel.

And if we get it right, the goal is simple—people leave not just with photos, but with a better understanding of the places they visit, and maybe even a slightly lighter footprint.