The heritage town of Luang Prabang is a topic that sparks enthusiastic conversation from Phetanong “Anong” Phonsavath, Lao PDR Country Director for business-to-business (B2B) destination management company Easia Travel.

As Easia’s prime mover for tourism products in Lao PDR, she’s worked with her team to develop the country’s destinations for a Western market. Her workload has been significantly increased recently, with a series of sustainability initiatives that cover a wide range of tourist activities. From elephant welfare to child safety to zero-waste, Easia’s new sustainability policy and projects leave nothing untouched.
We caught up with Anong to ask about Easia’s sustainability policy, the projects that have come from it, and why she believes sustainability is a team effort.
How long has Easia Travel been providing tourism services in the Mekong region?
Our office in Hanoi was established in 2000, so it’s been 24 years. In Lao PDR, we opened our office in 2011, making it 13 years now. We are a B2B tourism company, working closely with tour operators from European countries. Our primary focus is outbound tourism, organizing tours for clients from those regions.
EAsia operates in four destinations (previously, we had five). Viet Nam is our main destination, with offices spanning from the north to the south. We have four offices in Vietnam, two in Cambodia, three in Myanmar, two in Thailand, and three in Lao PDR. However, during the pandemic, we had to close some of our offices; our Myanmar offices have been closed for the past two years.
What do you do for the EAsia office in Lao PDR?
My main role here in Lao PDR is as the Country Director, overseeing all departments. We have a Production Department, Contracting, Operations, and Accounting.
Although we operate smaller offices, we still have various departments because we began implementing sustainability initiatives in Lao PDR back in 2014. Many of our tourism products are sustainability-focused, and we have a centralized Sustainability Department. I was responsible for the sustainability project in Lao PDR as well.

Image courtesy of Easia Travel
How did the sustainability initiative get started – and how is it coming along? Do you have a deadline for this?
There is no strict deadline for making the tour company fully sustainable, as achieving sustainability in tourism is challenging. We started from scratch. I had the opportunity to connect with Travelife, the first organization to provide us with guidelines.
Using the criteria provided by Travelife, we restructured our operations. We ensured legal compliance and worked on human rights and staff welfare. We made sure that all employees received social insurance, fair salaries, and reasonable working hours.
I believe we are the first company in Lao PDR where employees work only five days a week, from Monday to Friday, with two days off per week and an eight-hour workday. We also invest significantly in staff training to develop their skills. We have a dedicated team for staff training.
We collaborate closely with our partners in the tourism industry to ensure compliance. We help hotels, restaurants, and transportation providers implement best practices. We have a sustainability policy, and all our suppliers who want to work with us must meet our standard criteria.
What actual, concrete actions on sustainability by your company have resulted from this initiative?

I can share our sustainability policy, which is available on our website. We first implemented the policy with hotels since they have a significant impact on the environment and human rights. Next, we worked with our transportation partners because transportation has a big environmental impact. We also focused on reducing water and electricity usage.
We began these initiatives internally, and then cascaded the implementation down to our suppliers.
First, our “Refill, Not Landfill” project. Normally, we provided disposable plastic water bottles to our travelers. During the high season, we often have more than 3 million clients. Providing three bottles per day for each traveler generates a tremendous amount of waste, so I started thinking about how we could reduce it.
Since 2016, we’ve banned plastic water bottles for all travelers and provided reusable refill bottles instead. We set up refill stations at restaurants and even sponsored some stations at temples so that everyone can use them. This is something I am very proud of because it has been successful and continues to operate well.

Photo credit: Easia Travel
The second project we initiated here is focused on child safety, which is a very sensitive topic. When our guests visit destinations, they often want to take photos of children in the countryside or when passing by schools. This is something we are extremely cautious about.
We have partnered with the ChildSafe organization to develop a policy for our travelers to ensure responsible interactions when visiting destinations. We have a strict policy against photo-taking of children. They can still make donations to schools if they wish, but we do not permit our clients to visit villages on their own and give gifts to children directly.
The third initiative we focused on was elephant welfare. We couldn’t avoid addressing this, because when clients come to Lao PDR, they often want to see elephants, as Lao PDR is known as the “Land of a Million Elephants.” It’s something that is always on their minds.

We looked at how we could support elephant camps that practice good standards of care. For example, camps should not offer elephant riding services. We only sign contracts with camps that do not have riding activities—where visitors can simply feed the elephants, observe them from a distance, or watch them interact naturally. We made an effort to communicate this policy to our suppliers and clients.
The last project we are working on is carbon offsetting. This is quite challenging because we currently lack a system to calculate carbon offsets accurately, such as determining how many miles are traveled from Europe to here. We’re still working to create guidelines on how to calculate emissions.
You mentioned that there are guidelines and regulations that your partners need to comply with. Are these regulations established locally, or are they standardized?
Our guidelines are based on the standards set by Travelife, which is a global organization for sustainable tourism. We use some of their guidelines and then create our own criteria based on the specific needs of the destination. We also collaborate with the Global Sustainable Tourism Council to ensure our criteria are solid. These guidelines cover every department.

Image courtesy of Christian Bowman (CC BY-SA 2.0)
How do you coordinate sustainability policies with other Easia offices?
We have a centralized person responsible for sustainability policy across our destinations. This person coordinates with marketing to communicate our sustainability practices to clients. We need to communicate clearly what happens in each destination and what we are doing. If clients agree to participate, we sign a commitment together.
We started with each client, one by one, and spoke with our partners. If they agreed to participate, they signed a contract. Now we simply state, “This is our sustainability policy. If you want to work with us, you need to accept it from the beginning.” If they agree, we sign them on, one by one. In the end, everyone is happy to participate.
How do you assess or evaluate the outcomes of your efforts? Do you have KPIs?
In our initial plan, if we could get 20% of our partner hotels to agree to participate in the first year, we considered it a success. Now, more than 50% are participating, and some even have Travelife certification or ASEAN Green Hotel Standards. This shows that they are genuinely participating, and we continue to work together.
Over the last two years in Lao PDR, we’ve seen a lot of improvement in restaurants, transportation, and souvenir shops. They have projects focusing on meeting criteria and training suppliers to meet sustainability standards. If a supplier applies for Travelife certification, we support them.
Certification for transportation is quite challenging because we don’t have many electric cars or taxis. Without proper insurance for electric vehicles, we can’t work with them. So, we try to adjust by offering alternatives like walking, biking, or trekking for three or four days during a trip to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Image courtesy of Easia Travel
How do you feel about overtourism? Some destinations, like in Japan, are facing the same issues. We promote destinations, but when the tourists actually arrive, we don’t know how to manage them effectively.
Yes, I think it’s the same problem everywhere, especially in cities that are heavily promoted as tourist destinations—like Luang Prabang.
We want more visitors, but they need to match the city’s capacity. It’s not about welcoming everyone indiscriminately. Luang Prabang is a small city, and we should have rules to maintain its character and quality of life for locals.
I think we need to establish rules on carrying capacity, for example, determining how many people the city can handle in a day. At the very least, we should block minivans from entering the old town center and encourage walking.
We also need to think about how to filter visitors. Maybe we can start by looking at the length of stay. Some destinations are not for everyone. I don’t think that all tourists appreciate the historical significance of the place. Many come just to take photos, without caring about the cultural or historical meaning. We want travelers who respect the culture and want to learn and engage with the local stories.

Image courtesy of llee_wu (CC BY-ND 2.0)
I understand that from time to time, you develop new tourism products through collaboration with community-based tourism (CBT) initiatives or local communities. What are the challenges when you start working with communities that are unfamiliar with tourism?
We have a standard approach when we want to develop a community for tourism. We first survey the village, talk with the village chief, and go through a comprehensive checklist because we need to clearly communicate the benefits of community-based tourism.
We explain the potential benefits to the community, the highlights of the area, and what clients can learn from them. We also assess the potential negative and positive impacts. If the village agrees to participate, we proceed with training.
We never work with a community without proper engagement. Our team makes multiple visits, starting with teaching them how to assist clients and prepare sleeping areas. We check the accommodation, inspect the food, and even teach them how to cook for foreign guests. We train them until they are ready, which sometimes takes one or two years, depending on the complexity of the process.
We also work closely with the government, as they have established criteria for CBT villages and homestays. If the government has already visited an area and established standards, it helps us reduce the training required.
Even so, before bringing clients to a community, I personally visit to conduct a final checklist and select the villages carefully. We don’t bring clients everywhere.
As Country Director, what are your personal expectations for Easia Travel and its contribution to tourism in Lao PDR?
I want the company to follow every sustainability criterion, support communities, and help destinations preserve their authenticity and heritage. I always promote this approach.
I work closely with local people, whether it’s for restaurants, shops, or souvenir stores. We always prioritize working with local businesses to support them. It’s my top priority.
Find out more about Easia Travel: visit their website www.easia-travel.com, or check out their social media presence on Facebook.
This interview article is produced in collaboration with the ASEAN-Japan Centre (AJC) and the Mekong Tourism Coordinating Office (MTCO).