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It has been a challenging year for every single one of us, but hope always prevailed. Now more than ever, after spending months in lockdown, we can can attest that travel is one of the most precious sources of inspiration in life. We humans need to travel, to move, to experience culture and nature abroad. Travel makes us wiser and more sensitive. It allows us to feel free. As the world is ready to set sails again in 2022, Inkaterra welcomes you to Peru to explore its vast diversity – from the evergreen Amazon rainforest to the heights of Machu Picchu.

Inkaterra is proud to share with you its greatest achievements of 2021. Despite difficult times for our industry, Inkaterra accomplished many feats – from being acknowledged by the United Nations as the World’s First Climate-Positive Hotel Brand, to opening the largest exhibition on Peruvian culture to ever tour the world.

We thank all our travelers for their invaluable support, which allows us to keep innovating the future of sustainable travel.

-José Koechlin, Inkaterra Founder and CEO

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UNITED NATIONS ACKNOWLEDGES INKATERRA AS THE WORLD’S FIRST CLIMATE POSITIVE HOTEL BRAND

A new milestone was achieved in October 2021, when Inkaterra was acknowledged by the United Nations as the first Climate Positive hotel brand in the world. In line with the UN guidelines for sustainable development, the GreenInitiative certification company measured Inkaterra’s Co2 footprint and offset to determine the Peruvian ecotourism enterprise as climate positive – meaning, “any activity that furthers the achievement of net zero carbon emissions, providing an environmental benefit by removing additional carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.”

The announcement coincided with the 2021 Climate Change Conference (COP 26), where the United Nations World Tourism Organization officially submitted the Glasgow Declaration to set in motion a Decade of Climate Action in the travel industry. Inkaterra is among the leading organizations pledging to cut global tourism emissions by at least a half over the next decade and reach Net Zero emissions as soon as possible before 2050, in alignment with the Paris Agreement.

“This outstanding accomplishment is a validation of Inkaterra’s 46-year efforts placing scientific research, biodiversity conservation and sustainability at the very core of our business,” stated ecotourism pioneer José Koechlin.

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HOTELS MAGAZINE: INKATERRA IS “SUSTAINABLE AT ITS CORE”

The influential Hotels Magazine celebrated Inkaterra’s climate-positive recognition with an extensive article on Inkaterra’s most recent initiatives on ecotourism and sustainable development. The feature article highlighted Cabo Blanco in Northern Peru, a former game fishing mecca, where Inkaterra plans to establish a new beach hotel, among other sustainability initiatives. Inkaterra will offer travelers a “privileged spot” surrounded by waves for surfers and kitesurfers and will continue to develop new diving routes in the destination.

Additionally, Inkaterra leads efforts to make Machu Picchu the first carbon- neutral Wonder of the World. In partnership with the Municipality of Machu Picchu, AJE Group, the National Service of Protected Natural Areas (SERNANP), Bosques Amazónicos and other key players, Inkaterra’s strategic alliance is ensuring a carbon-free future for Machu Picchu.

Through an innovative waste management strategy and a reforestation plan to nurture one million trees across the Machu Picchu national reserve, Peru’s most iconic destination has become the first city in Latin America to achieve a circular economy.

“Inkaterra’s expertise is available for anyone who needs it,” Koechlin said to HOTELS. “The natural environment and native cultures are our industry’s most precious resources, and their conservancy is the only way to ensure the future of travel.”

“THIS IS THE CRÈME DE LA CRÈME”:
THE NEW YORK TIMES
FEATURED ‘MACHU PICCHU
AND THE GOLDEN EMPIRES OF PERU’

On November 28, The New York Times reviewed ‘Machu Picchu and the Golden Empires of Peru,’ the largest exhibition to showcase Peru’s cultural legacy and extraordinary biodiversity. Running through March 3 at the Boca Raton Museum of Art in Florida, ‘Machu Picchu and the Golden Empires of Peru’ will then head to Paris on April 2022.

The groundbreaking event, produced by Inkaterra Asociación in alliance with the makers of the record-breaking ‘Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of Pharaohs,’ has been praised by the NYT as “a dazzling collection of sculpted gold and silver ornaments, ceramic jugs and bowls, many dating back thousands of years.”

“The exhibition has been staged like a theatrical production with dramatic lighting, sparkling crystal glass display cases and a virtual reality feature that takes you on a swooping, plunging, magic carpet ride over the roofless ruins of the Inca citadel,” the NYT wrote.

This all-new, immersive museum experience boasts a stunning selection of 192 artifacts from the Larco Museum – one of the most impressive collections of gold treasures to ever tour the world. From all the magnificent objects displayed at the Boca Museum, the NYT highlights “one stunning set of gold funereal trappings set on a skeletal manikin slams you to a stop: a big, blazing chest covering, a gleaming crown and shimmering round disks for the ears.”

“You feel the power of every object,” said Michelle Feuer to the NYT, a director of a tech start-up from West Palm Beach, after spending part of an afternoon absorbing the pre-Columbian art. According to Andrew James Hamilton, a curator at the Chicago Art Institute, “this is the crème de la crème.”

At the exhibition’s gift shop, visitors receive special rates and promotions to stay at the Inkaterra lodges. “Machu Picchu and the Golden Empires of Peru is the most innovative way to welcome travelers from all around the world to explore our many wonders,” says exhibition partner José Koechlin.

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A SNAKE SPECIES NEW TO SCIENCE
WAS NAMED AFTER INKATERRA

Oxybelis inkaterra sp. nov., a vine snake species recently described as new to science in the Evolutionary Systematics Journal 5 (1), honored through its specific epithet “the ecotourism company Inkaterra and its non-profit NGO counterpart Inkaterra Asociación” for promoting education and conservation of Peruvian culture and ecosystems in “one of the of the most thoroughly studied areas in the Neotropics, particularly for amphibian and reptile natural history.”

Since 1978, Inkaterra has produced flora and fauna inventories to define the baseline of species within its its natural areas of influence. Having registered 903 bird species (almost equivalent to Costa Rica’s total bird diversity), 365 ant species (the world record sponsored by Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson) and 372 native orchid species (the world’s largest native orchid collection according to the American Orchid Society) on its hotels’ grounds, Inkaterra’s ascending learning curve has led to the description of 29 new species to science by fellow researchers.

The Oxybelis inkaterra was found by Dr. William E. Duellman, from the BIOTROP Program (Kansas University). His groundbreaking, two-decade research led to the first book inventorying biodiversity found within Inkaterra grounds in Madre de Dios – where this vine snake was initially featured. Cusco Amazonico: The Lives of Amphibians and Reptiles in an Amazonian Rainforest (1991) was considered by Cornell Univeristy “the baseline against which all future studies of Amazonian amphibians and reptiles (and even other organisms) will be compared.”

ENJOY SOME OF 2021’S
BEST ARTICLES ON INKATERRA

In March, Inkaterra Hacienda Urubamba was named by Travel + Leisure as one of the 500 best hotels in the world, according to the magazine’s discerning readers. The property was also handpicked by The Sunday Telegraph as a bucket list-worthy stay for your first post-lockdown adventure. “This spacious hotel, tucked away in the Sacred Valley of the Incas, is the ideal stop-off before or after a Machu Picchu trek, and is blissfully removed from the well-trodden tourist trail,” The Sunday Telegraph praised.

ABC News went live from the Inkaterra Canopy Walkway in a special broadcast during the United Nations’ COP 26. Reporter Matt Gutman visited the Inkaterra Canopy Walkway to report live on Good Morning America from the Peruvian Amazon. “This is literally one of the most biodiverse spots in the planet,” said Matt Gutman while exploring the breathtaking view above Inkaterra’s bridges and observation platforms facing the Madre de Dios river. “Down there, 130 feet below me, are thousands and thousands of species.”

Inkaterra’s renewed spa collection was announced in the September issue of Architectural Digest Latin America. Featuring a close look at Inkaterra Reserva Amazonica’s Ena Spa, frequent collaborator Rebeca Vaisman praised designers Denise Guislain and Sandra Masías for Ena Spa’s spectacular view of the Madre de Dios river, its distinctive scent of sangapia, high ceilings that create a refreshing ambience, and the use of native bombacaceae wood, palm leaves and stone in harmony with the surrounding vegetation.

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