If you would like to view the Spanish version of our Internal Letter:
➠ Terra Caribea Internal Letter – updated on 10/22/2025
Terra Caribea's Social and Environmental Responsibility: Internal Best Practices
At Terra Caribea, a French inbound travel agency based in Costa Rica, webelieve in the importance of aligning our practices with our values. This charter formalizes the commitments we uphold every day to embody sustainable and responsible tourism, both internally and in our interactions with our clients and partners.
It serves as a shared guide for the entire team and aims to strengthen a corporate culture based on ethics, consistency, and continuous improvement.
Our Shared Values
We share a guiding principle based on five key values:
- Respect for people, cultures, and fundamental rights
- Protection of the environment and biodiversity
- Support for local economies and community stakeholders
- Ethics, transparency, and kindness in our relationships
- Team spirit, mutual support, and balance in our shared lives
Internal Environmental Commitments
Reducing our environmental impact is a fundamental commitment that is reflected in our office practices, resource management, and consumption patterns.
We have implemented:
- A recycling station (cardboard, plastic, glass) and a compost bin for organic waste.
- Energy-efficient LED light bulbs and mindful use of lighting.
- Water conservation measures: flow restrictors, a water meter for monitoring, and the elimination of hot water.
- No air conditioning: natural ventilation and fans.
- A clean energy provider (90% renewable electricity in Costa Rica).
- Reduced paper use (double-sided printing, digital documents).
- Reuse of materials for welcome kits.
- Use of dish towels instead of disposable paper towels.
- Eco-friendly or certified cleaning products.
- Tupperware containers provided to employees for their meals.
We are also developing digital frugality practices aimed at limiting our digital footprint: regularly deleting emails, using simplified email signatures, recycling inactive email accounts, and systematically turning off equipment when not in use.
We have a procurement policy that guides our purchasing according to these guiding principles: Needs Assessment; Repair and Reuse; Preference for Responsible Products; Waste Reduction. We also apply criteria based on the nature of the product: environmental impact; geographic proximity; energy efficiency; and environmental, organic, and/or fair trade certification.
Social Commitments and Team Well-Being
We strive to create a healthy, stable work environment that aligns with our mission. In practice, this means:
- Using local contractors for our cleaning and maintenance services.
- A monthly budget allocated to each employee for a sports or cultural activity of their choice.
- A clear system for managing vacation and holidays, based on fair principles.
- A partial remote work policy available to everyone.
- Organizing team-building activities to strengthen team cohesion.
- Transparency regarding the agency’s financial health, salaries, tax management, and profit distribution.
We have a human resources policy based on decent working conditions (salary, insurance, job-related risks, schedules, and time off), access to training, monitoring of employee development, opportunities for advancement, measurement of employee satisfaction, and additional benefits distributed equitably. In the same vein, we have implemented a recruitment policy based on equal opportunity, a structured approach to immigration, and a bilingual work environment.
We have implemented an occupational health and safety policy that involves identifying, assessing, and controlling hazards in the workplace. This policy is based on a dual responsibility: to provide a safe working environment for our employees and to ensure safe travel conditions for our customers.
Collective Commitment and Partner Relations
Every employee embodies the company’s commitments on a daily basis through the following actions:
- Signing the Code of Ethics, which guides our behavior and decisions in line with our responsibilities toward customers, partners, colleagues, and communities.
- Internal guidelines such as the weekly rotation of shared tasks (tidying up, sorting, cooking) and respect for shared spaces.
- Participation in volunteer activities to support our partners or local organizations.
- Implementing and monitoring an annual CSR action plan to guide our efforts.
Our responsibility extends far beyond our team. We seek to create a sustainable ecosystem with our clients and partners:
- An international and national certification process for responsible tourism to formalize our ecological transition.
- Estimating our carbon footprint and offsetting our emissions through FONAFIFO, via financial contributions to a project with a strong social impact.
- A donation policy based on a fixed amount contributed per traveler to a local nonprofit.
- Regular communication of our CSR commitments to our suppliers through a charter, newsletters, and a dedicated portal.
- Respect for human rights, children’s rights, the environment, and local cultures, formalized through ethical responsibility agreements signed by our suppliers.
- The distribution of codes of conduct for sensitive activities, available in French and Spanish, intended for our customers and service providers.
- A policy for selecting and evaluating our partners that incorporates criteria for sustainability and brand consistency.
- Communication and awareness-raising among travelers: informing clients about responsible tourism and the practices to adopt during their trip to travel ethically; inclusion of a section dedicated to CSR in our customer satisfaction surveys.
Finally, Terra Caribea is part of Terra Panamerica, a network of six incoming agencies located between South America and North America. Together, we are driving a regional initiative aimed at building a model of innovative and committed agencies that integrate sustainability into every aspect of our business.
Monitoring, Updating, and Dissemination of the Charter
This charter is a living document. It is updated annually in the interest of transparency, to ensure that our actions remain consistent with the values that guide us. It is shared with every new employee joining the agency, included as an appendix to the welcome booklet, and accessible at any time via our internal shared portal.
