History and Mission of the Foundation

The Context Foundation for Sustainable Travel was founded in 2007 by Paul Bennett and Lani Bevacqua, the founders of Context Travel, an organization of scholars and specialists who design tours for intellectually curious travelers. A commercial enterprise, Context presently operates in over 60 destinations around the world.

As part of our work we fund an annual apprenticeship with artisans in Florence in an effort to keep this intangible culture alive.

Through its work around the globe, Context became sensitized to the key role that tourism plays in local economies. Tourism is one of the primary industries (if not the primary) in most of these cities, driving the economy and decisions of local government and influencing the lives of residents. At the same time, tourism—specifically, mass tourism—has introduced a number of new problems and now threatens to transform or diminish the qualities that have made them so unique over the centuries.

In Cartagena, Colombia, we support a local youth center in the barrio San Francisco, which is empowering a new generation of civic leaders.

The problems are as unique as the cities themselves. In Venice and Florence, for example, a certain kind of “slash and burn” tourism has pushed residents out of the center, making these cities in some respects less authentic and more touristic than they were previously. In Paris, mass tourism has skewed the federal preservation agenda to favor the most popular sights at the expense of a host of “forgotten monuments” that are literally crumbling before our eyes. In Rome, major monuments like the Colosseum or Vatican are so overcrowded that not only does one fear for their physical security but their meaning—once so powerful, so fundamental to the Western mind—becomes compromised.

The Context Foundation is dedicated to mitigating these negative effects of tourism by searching out local initiatives that counteract or offset them. Sometimes this involves championing and drawing attention to lesser monuments; sometimes it involves helping the local community adapt to the changes wrought by tourism; and sometimes it means simply fighting those changes altogether.

From its vantage point as mediator between visiting clients and host destinations, Context has the enviable position of witnessing the transformative effects enjoyed by each. In order to ensure that these benefits are shared broadly, the Foundation invests in a project that extends the transformative and educational impact of travel by making it available to a wider population, such as inner-city youths.

Scholarship winners discuss war history at Normandy as part of our Transforming Youth Through Travel scholarship.

To learn more about what we do, take a look at our projects.