The practice came first. The institution comes now.
TTI exists for wellbeing, peace, and stewardship of the places that host us.
It is a charity that learns how experiences change people, places and the living world, then shares what works through standards, training and community-led projects. It starts with travel and hospitality.
Where It Began
In 2000, Jake Haupert was on Dog Beach in Solana Beach, California, reading about the emerging Ecotourism Society, when he made a decision:
“I wanted to dedicate my life to helping travel and experiences create a better world, one person at a time.”
The instinct was right, and it arrived years ahead of the tools to make it reliable, repeatable and teachable. TTI exists to build them.
What an experience can do
Meeting a challenge we thought was beyond us can give us the confidence to change direction. Listening to someone whose life runs differently can change how we treat each other. Time in nature can move us to care for the places around us. And it reaches past travel: a museum, a concert, an afternoon with neighbors. TTI studies the moments that do this, from awe and wonder to the exchange between guests, hosts and place.
Why TTI exists
But an experience guarantees none of this. Most of us have come home with good intentions that didn't last. TTI exists to learn what helps that change last, and who benefits, with communities defining what benefit means in their own places. No single business can do this alone, because the answers belong to everyone. That is why TTI is a charity.
From a trust to an institute
TTI began in 2009 as The Travelers Conservation Trust, set up by Kurt Kutay so money from travel could flow back to the places travelers visit. In 2023, it relaunched as the Transformational Travel Institute, a 501(c)(3) public charity to help provide equitable access to mission aligned educational programs. Now it has a wider job: shared standards, open research, and training that reaches people one program alone never could.
Where TTI is headed
TTI starts with travel and hospitality because that is where its roots and relationships are. The same questions apply wherever experiences are designed: retreats, arts and culture, education, events and digital experiences. As its research, partnerships and capacity grow, TTI aims to develop standards for those settings too.
2027
The founding year
The first standards are tested and published, practitioner certification opens, and the first Experience Impact Profile findings come out.
2031
Standing on its own
150 practitioners holding current certification, 25 organizations working with TTI as Standards Partners, and programs carrying TTI's running costs.
2040
Normal practice
Designing for lasting change is normal practice across travel, hospitality and beyond. TTI's 2040 targets will grow out of the same plan, as it learns what works.
Whether the people and places these practitioners and organizations reach are better off, in wellbeing, peace and stewardship, is the question the Experience Impact Profile is built to answer.
TTI and the Transformational Travel Council
The Transformational Travel Council is a separate company that shares founders with TTI. For eight years it did applied work in public with tour operators, guides, hotel and lodge teams, retreat leaders and destination organizations, and more than 600 alumni across more than 40 countries have come through its programs, with more than 200 practitioners in its community
TTI is its own charity, with its own board, budget and accounts. Its standards and research are written in the open, with practitioners, researchers and host communities, and belong to no company.