Balancing Adventure and Ethical Travel: A Digital Nomad's Story

Keri Pfeiffer, a digital nomad for almost seven years, works remotely as the Head of Account Management at WeTravel, an online payment platform for tour companies. Following completion of the Sustainability and Anti-Oppression in Travel program at RISE, Keri is now a guest instructor with the course "How to Travel Ethically as a Digital Nomad." In this interview with host Amy Hager, Keri discusses her views on being an ethical digital nomad and how completing the RISE Certificate Flagship Program has inspired more thoughtful travel habits.

Host: Amy Hager - Social Media Manager at The RISE Travel Institute
Video and Audio Editing: Kate Mulvihill - Video and Podcast Producer at The RISE Travel Institute
Graphic Design: Shirley Wong - Freelance Art Director
Music: On My Way by Kevin MacLeod (License) 

Transcript

Intro
Hello and welcome. Wherever you are in the world today, thank you for joining us for The RISE Traveler, unpacking conversations of sustainable travel. We are here to talk to eco minded and socially conscious travelers, diversity and inclusion specialists, wildlife conservationists, environmental activists, and anyone using travel as a way to uplift and inspire. Together, we will go a step beyond the Instagram-ready world of travel, and take a look at how travel can be a source of growth and development for all people in all communities. 
This podcast is an extension of the RISE Travel Institute, a 501c3 nonprofit committed to empowering young travelers through educational programs, research, study tours and scholarships. Visit risetravelinstitute.org to learn more. And now, here's your host, Amy Hager. 

Amy Hager
Hello, hello, wherever you are in the world today. Thank you for joining us on The RISE Traveler, unpacking conversations of sustainable travel. And we're here to really talk about how travel can be uplifting and inspiring and going a step beyond that Instagram-ready world that we kind of see and know of travel. And we really want to take a deeper look at how travel can be a source of growth and development for all people in all communities. Here at the RISE Travel Institute we're committed to empowering young travelers through educational programs, research study tours and scholarships. So if you're interested in learning more about RISE, please check us out at risetravelinstitute.org. If we haven't met before, I'm your host, Amy Hager. And so today with me is Keri Pfeiffer. And she is joining me live from Mexico City. So Keri, thanks for joining me.

Keri Pfeiffer 
Yeah, thanks for having me. Excited to chat.

Amy Hager
Well, I'm excited too because I think the topic that you're bringing to the table today is really, really timely, and I can't wait to dive in a little bit deeper. But first, I kinda want to let the audience know Keri is actually a graduate and completed our certificate, our course. So she has her certificate in Sustainable and Anti Oppression for Travel. And she also was the author of our Digital Nomad course. And so that all came together, Keri, because when you were completing our course, you got to do your final project. And you had chosen Digital Nomad. So tell me why did you choose that as your topic?

Keri Pfeiffer 
Yeah, well, yeah, backstory on myself. I've been traveling and working remotely from home since 2016. So I originally actually lived in New York City, after university for a few years. I worked in like kind of a corporate environment there. And once I got burnt out from that lifestyle, I decided to kind of like quit my job and like backpacked through Southeast Asia and get certified as a yoga teacher, you know, kind of like that. That thing you do, I guess, if you can, and you have the privilege to. And so while I was doing that, I actually ran into a lot of people along the way that were working and traveling remotely back in 2016. And realized, like, why am I not doing this? Like, why have I not like, taken this step. So once I kind of ran out of money as you do when you're like 26, 27, I decided to like, solely look for a remote only job. And that's where I came across the company WeTravel, which I currently work at and can get into if you want to later. So I've been working and traveling for them since 2017. And since I have been a digital nomad since about 2016, 17, I kind of thought that the topic really tied in perfectly with RISE’s like final project. We were taking, like all of the learnings from the pilot program at the time, which is now the Flagship Program. And we were really like showing how we, how we will what we took away from it and what we learned and kind of tying it into something that meant something to us, or a topic that we were passionate about. And I felt that it was just like the perfect alignment to take everything I learned and then go ahead and apply that towards like the digital nomad lifestyle that I was living.

Amy Hager 
I think like the term digital nomad just has become more and more popular and more common due to COVID. And so you were living this before it was trendy. And so tell me well, before we dive into the topic of digital nomad, I think what you do for your job is superduper interesting. So tell me a little bit more about where you work and and how how you work in the travel space.

Keri Pfeiffer 
Yeah, so I work for a company called WeTravel. They're a booking and payment software built for tour operators or anyone that really organizes like multi day or group travel. So we have about 2000-3000 clients that currently use us and a wide spectrum of different types of travel. Anything from group travel, to wellness travel, to religious travel. I mean, I could go on and on. And so I work really closely as the Head of the Account Management team there. So I work really closely with all of our existing clients, helping them grow their business, helping them use our software, etc. And since I also have a passion for sustainable travel, once COVID did, like arrive and happen in early 2020, obviously, our sales and like account management team just kind of fully stopped happening because we didn't have a need for sales. And no one was really traveling, we kind of went to like a risk and crisis management mode as like, as with everyone else. And after, we kind of had time to think about that, and help our clients with all the, you know, refunds and crises, they were going through, we had this down period of like, what are we going to do next?
And because of our passion and sustainable travel, as a company, and myself, we kind of decided to start building content and online webinars and courses and things for our existing clients just to keep them engaged, not only with how to continue growing their business and staying afloat, because of COVID, but also how to grow their business in this like whole sustainable and ethical travel space. So I started hosting different webinars with experts from tourismcares, you know, like 101 how to grow your, your sustainable travel business, or how to incorporate sustainable behaviors into your existing tour operator company. I mean, we went on many different webinars from there to like, you know, I don't know ethical trouble when in regards to animals and like wildlife. We just did one recently on ethical photography when it comes to animals and wildlife. So all of our courses and content is built for tour operators and sort of up to help them like kind of the source of who a lot of people are traveling with, make sure that they're taking these practices into effect. So even today, yeah, if anyone's interested in seeing the stuff we have out there, we have an academy, it's free. It's called wetravel.com/academy. And there's all of our past webinars, blog posts, we have a Women in Travel section of the webinar, or excuse me, of the academy, where we really just amplify women’s voices, female voices, or female-identifying voices. And we have lots of free courses on there, like an Intro to Tourism for LGBTQ+ Travel or an Introduction to Sustainable Tourism. And there's more to come too. But yeah, so we're also doing that, I'm doing that, in addition to kind of my own, like sustainable journey as well.

Amy Hager 
And I think that's what the great thing too is with RISE, we know, we can't do this alone. And we need great partners, like individuals like you have completed our course. But we also want to make sure that we're working with and encouraging other organizations and companies who are here to help educate and raise the awareness that sustainable travel is something that we should be considering and thinking about in our day to day lives. And I know you and I are going to dive a little bit more into this. So, when you think about your life as a digital nomad, and your, you know, were there any moments or really kind of that awakening Oh! times in your travel where it really changed your view of how to be a more mindful traveler and how to be more sustainable and how to really do that as a daily like practice.

Keri Pfeiffer  
Yeah, and I would say I really started like learning on learning like diving into this idea and topic of sustainable travel probably 2 ½ years ago. So my previous you know, 3+ years of being a digital nomad I've I've can't say that there was any like Aha! moments for me, it was probably just traveling as is and you know, doing what I thought was right at the time. And then taking RISE’s Flagship Program last summer was actually one of the like, Aha moments for me where we upon taking the course and for anyone out there has taken it or will take it, there's, you know, 10 weeks of different sessions that you go through on different topics. And when doing so I realized a lot of things that I had done in the past were probably not the best and like kind of Aha moments have ways to fix that. 
For example. I remember I went snorkeling or diving with whale sharks in the Philippines like back in 2018, 2017. And it felt really cringy now looking back on it, like it was like hundreds of boats, maybe like 20 feet off shore they were feeding the whale sharks, you know, people are just jumping in on intervals of every 15-20 minutes like and at the time like I had no, no idea in my mind like this is even something that is bad or that I shouldn't be doing. And then after taking RISE’s course and there was a whole section around, you know, marine marine biology and bettering the ecosystems there. I realized that was a kind of an Aha moment for me of like, wow, I should not have done that like from a justice individual travel standpoint, and I actually did snorkel with whale sharks again, in 2019, or maybe 20. Actually, no, 2021. I don't, you know, my dates are all messed up at this point, like two years later, and I did it again off of La Paz in Baja, California. But this time, I did it like kind of completely different way I went with a female-owned and driven research company where all of the people that you go diving with are certified scientists. Yeah, you're paying and like the snorkeling strip that you go on is private, just with the scientist and yourself and your friends or family. And the money that you give the scientists and the company goes 100% back into the research of the whale sharks, they know all the whale sharks by name, they tag them, they follow their migratory patterns, like you learn to like how whale sharks migrate, how they interact, how they reproduce, like all these things that you probably don't learn just jumping into a boat and snorkeling and so like I did it a completely different way. In a more ethical way, I would say we weren't, we weren't chasing whale sharks, it was just one boat with us. And we found some after a few hours, which was super cool. So that's like kind of a big Aha moment for me from just traveling.

Amy Hager  
Well, and I think that's a great example to share. Because when we say thinking about things being more sustainable, and where your dollar is going and how it's impacting you. Having stories like that, Keri, is really important because I don't think it's necessarily top of mind and intuitive for people. And that's the whole goal of what we want to achieve at RISE. We know we can't go back and erase what we did in the past. But to be able to think and approach travel differently going forward is exactly you know, what we want to help people do in those tiny little tweaks, you still can enjoy whale sharks. But when you look at it through the lens of going through the tour operator, the research tour that you went on, versus the big tours where I've seen it like the hundreds of boats going on shoreline, fish the whale sharks out with food and chumming the water… Those two different experiences do just sound absolutely amazing to be able to go out with the researchers and really learn more and be more immersive in in the activity.

Keri Pfeiffer 
Yeah, and then from even like a digital nomad perspective, I wouldn't say it's even as much of the tour of like an everyday leisure traveler, it's more of like how you're approaching and coming to a different destination and place that you're going to. I had a conversation with friends, I don't know but over a year ago now, and I was like in right in the midst of taking RISE’s flagship program at the time, I believe. And it was around the idea of like choosing where we're going to live right? Because digital nomads they're moving constantly. So it's like first, A, how do you even choose where you're going? How do you choose? If you're going to point A to point B? Are you just going to like knock another destination off your bucket list? Check it off your list? Are you going just because you know friends there? Do you have like a meaningful reason to be going there? 
But also like where do you choose to stay. Like are you staying in hotels? Likely not. Are you staying in Airbnbs that are owned by booking management companies? Are you staying with someone who's got a locally owned Airbnb? Which is actually quite tough to find these days, because there's so many booking management properties like taking over and saturating a lot of the markets. 
But then also like, just physically like the location. We were talking about, like, you know, all these digital nomads and people like to say like, “I'm going to, like, get off the beaten path, or I'm going to stay off the whatever.” And so it sounds cool in theory, but if we're all like going and staying in these like up-and-coming neighborhoods, and we're really just like gentrifying all the new neighborhoods versus just staying in the already gentrified neighborhood, we might not be like adding to the problem. And people a lot of people say well, “I'm just like one person,” which is fine, you might be just one person but as digital nomadism continues to like, grow and expand and more and more people are doing it and coming to these cities and destinations. It's only a problem is only going to continue to grow. For example, in Mexico City, there's a huge housing problem right now because a lot of digital nomads are coming here wanting to stay here long term. A lot don't have residency, a lot of properties are actually only renting to expats right now. And like you know jacking up the prices because they know they can get twice of what they could. They you know, they think oh, it's New Yorkers or people from LA they can afford. Yeah, a whole nother interesting tangent to come down with.

Amy Hager  
As I guess as a digital nomad, Keri, like, how do you choose where to go?

Keri Pfeiffer  
Yeah, I mean, we tried to do it definitely more mindfully now, before when even just choosing a destination. Like in the past I could have been then like, “Oh, it's just it's right next door or I'm just going here because of X, Y, and Z reason.” Now it's more like I really want to experience the culture, and understand the people, and the food, or I don't know I really want to like immerse myself into it and with good reason. 
Do your research, kind of before you show up as well on like the economical and political environment of the destination. And then we really try, I specifically make a point to only rent local. I try not to stay in like hostels or Airbnbs. Even if I'm using like a co-working space, try to find a local co working space over like, the wework. 
But yeah, we choose I choose if I can, like, like gentrified neighborhood, if you will, already. Yeah, just because I don't. Yeah, I don't I mean, of course, add to the problem. It's an interesting dynamic, because also, a lot of people choose to become digital nomads, because their dollar, their Euro, goes farther in the destinations that they're now staying in. And they also have to think about that dynamic, because if you are going to be staying, and expecting like a local’s price, you really shouldn't be, because you're also making you know, 5, 10x times the amount of salary.

Amy Hager  
Well, so then when you look into your crystal ball, it's really great that you've been a digital nomad pre-COVID through COVID. And now and looking through your- I'm gonna say the sustainable RISE Travel crystal ball-  like how do you see the future of travel and sustainability as a digital nomad? And as that community?

Keri Pfeiffer 
Yeah, I mean, I think from a positive standpoint, I feel like local is only going to continue to grow like people definitely have that mindset. And I think COVID also accelerated that like, of supporting local and amplifying like minority-owned businesses, like I feel like that will only continue to grow as people travel. And there's more resources out there like that you can find as to like, you know, here's the 20 Best Female Owned Restaurants and Shops in Buenos Aires or wherever may be. As that content continues to grow, I feel like that will be a positive thing. And I think digital nomads are gone and like going down that that route. But from the other standpoint, I don't know. And I'm very worried about how, as digital nomads, Madison continues to grow, and more and more people decide to like pack up and travel and work remotely like how it's going to affect all these different cultures and cities. And if you will, like a lot of people say digital nomad hubs where there's like a strong expat community of people that are doing this or that have decided to just recently move here, but are still working remotely. They're not a retired expat community. And there's lots of them out there. There's Mexico City is one of them, Medellin, Chiang Mai is one up and coming. A lot of people are going to Lisbon. And it was you like how is like housing going to change? How is local businesses going to change like are we going to start to see like more businesses catering to like the Western traveler with like, you know, avocado toast stands and this and that. And then they're like, you know, displacing the, like the local taco vendor that used to be there, whatever it may be. So that's kind of worrying. And with Airbnb, kind of, like promoting their, like longer stays. And that also, they take a large chunk from even local renters anyways. So is that going to matter? 
And then, I mean, it's just interesting, I think it's going to come down to also like governments stepping in and like making sustainable and ethical choices, and hopefully, figuring out how the infrastructure will work in like, a sustainable way. And I hope it happens, because I've seen how they some other like, I know, I saw a report from the Portuguese government recently saying that they weren't worried about digital nomads in Lisbon, like rising prices, etc. Because they didn't believe that digital nomads like wanted to stay in cities, that they would go to like remote places. Which I just don't agree with because you need like strong Wi Fi, etc. There's so many anyway, so it'll be interesting to see. I really hope that this community can like start to learn and like unlearn what they're doing and like take in these these ideas and practices into like daily life. And then if it but it also I think needs to happen from like a governmental like top down level to to be able to say like, okay, we're limiting this or if you're coming on a digital nomad visa, the money's going here, here, here. We’ll see.

Amy Hager  
And like I just, it's kind of a trick question. We can't predict like, what it's going to look like. And I think there has been a lot of changes and we're in this unfortunately, we're in this process of we're learning as we go, but also thankful for those who are willing to learn and explore, right? 

Keri Pfeiffer
Yeah, no, I agree. 

Amy Hager
So then my last question today is,  Keri, what legacy do you want to leave behind in this world?

Keri Pfeiffer 
Yeah, and I was telling you this earlier that I don't really have, I don't know if I have any ideas to have a legacy. I mean, in all honesty, I just want to be someone who was maybe seen as like kind and someone who maybe just tried to leave the world better than the way I came into it. But as long as I'm trying, I think that's all that really matters. But yeah, I don't have any aspirations to have this, this massive legacy. I feel like if anything, maybe like putting the legacy onto others, or like amplifying minority voices would be better than my own, I guess. So. That's it.

Amy Hager 
That’s why you are a guest on our podcast.

Keri Pfeiffer  
Thanks for having me, it’s been nice.

Amy Hager  
It's been really great to kind of talk and just explore this. And again, I feel like the digital nomad world is still something that we're trying to figure out and trying to make sure that we have sustainable ways to still enjoy and do but sharing your story and sharing your experiences is really helpful for our listeners. So thank you.

Keri Pfeiffer
I'm glad to hear it. Yeah. And I dive way more into this into the course if anyone's interested.

Amy Hager 
I'm gonna say like, we've only scratched the surface, folks. So if you are interested in learning more about digital nomad and the impact and how to do it more sustainable, please please please check out our digital nomad course at rise travelinstitute.org. And that brings us to the end of our journey today. But if you've liked what you've heard, and you want to hear more, also subscribe to our newsletter. You can follow us at RISE Travel Institute, on Facebook, Instagram or on Twitter. We're @bearisetraveler. And again, here at the RISE Travel Institute, we believe that travel is a powerful tool for positive transformative change. And so if you're a college student planning a study abroad trip, a young professional thinking about that gap year somebody who is wanting to be a digital nomad or is currently a digital nomad. Or, if you're just planning on travel, and you want to do it in a more sustainable way, we do encourage you to go to risetravelinstitute.org for more information on our educational courses. And we'll be back soon with another episode. But until then, keep roaming, keep learning and continue to be a RISE Traveler. Bye!

Keri Pfeiffer
Bye!

Close
This podcast is an extension of The RISE Travel Institute, a 501c3 nonprofit committed to empowering young travelers through educational programs, research, study tours, and scholarships. Visit risetravelinstitute.org to learn more.