Guided by local communities, the GoGood app helps travelers explore and sustain treasured places.
Welcome to GoGood!
Are you a thoughtful traveler?
You probably love nature and culture—seeing it, being in it, and doing what you can to conserve it.
Undoubtedly, you love interesting places—in your home town, state, region, or country, or places you’ve visited.
If so, you’ll love GoGood, the app for thoughtful travelers to explore and sustain the world’s treasured places, and help authentic, sustainable destinations reach those travelers.
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We will never sell or use your information for commercial purposes.
GoGood is a digital map and travel guide app—let’s call it a mapguide—designed for thoughtful travelers who love to explore places and cultures and want their visits to have a positive local impact.
It’s a fun and trusted way to find authentic places that preserve nature and culture and support local communities.
Like us, you probably spend weeks searching dozens of websites, apps, books, and videos—most of which are highly promoted and guide you to overcrowded, unsustainable places owned by large corporations—and tracking and marketing to you in the process.
Guided by local experts and dedicated to positive local impact, the GoGood app provides a trusted, carefully curated source of maps, guides, and local knowledge for the most interesting, authentic, and sustainable places and experiences in a destination.
It helps you enrich your travel experiences and sustain the places you love.
And it’s free to use without advertising or collecting and selling your personal data.
Plus, it offers opportunities to directly support local projects that sustain destinations and local and Indigenous communities.
GoGood is a not-for-profit venture run by an expert team of technologists, travelers, conservationists, and supporters who love nature and culture and are driven to sustain treasured places and the people who care for them.
Like you, we love nature, culture, and history. We love traveling and experiencing these things close to home and around the world.
We’re explorers and sustainable travel experts who live in tourist destinations and care deeply about the places, people, and ecosystems around us. We spend a good chunk of our time and money traveling to see and experience the best of what the world has to offer—and we try to do it in ways that sustain and enhance the places we visit.
We know the enormous impact of the travel industry—a sector representing about 10% of global GDP—on ecosystems, economies, and cultures. And we know the impact is often greatest in places with the most important natural and cultural heritage.
The Big Problem—Unsustainable Tourism
Through our travels and conservation work (and lots of data), we’ve found that natural and cultural heritage sites and landscapes are essential to the identity, pride, and economies of the local communities that care for them—and many are globally essential for their cultural value to humanity and their priceless ecosystem services.
But tragically, the natural areas, heritage sites, and cultures that are the hearts of these places are being degraded by unsustainable, inauthentic tourism and human-caused environmental threats, including:
- Overtourism that degrades the resident and visitor experience and environment in popular places;
- Undertourism and lack of economic development and commitment to sustain resources in less-visited places;
- Leakage where tourism income flows disproportionately to foreign interests instead of destination communities;
- Inauthentic and inappropriate tourism that does not accurately represent or support local culture and ecology;
- Pollution from tourism operations that affects the health and well-being of residents, visitors, and ecosystems;
- Habitat loss and degradation that reduces biodiversity richness, ecosystem health, and water quality and quantity.
The Traveler Problem—Lack of Guidance
As frequent travelers, we know that travel planning is difficult and time-consuming.
Information about places is fragmented and unreliable—with an annoying preponderance of promotions, clickbait, popups, and trackers.
It takes weeks to research destinations—searching dozens of websites, apps, books, magazines, and videos to find interesting, authentic, sustainable destinations and experiences and plan thoughtful and enriching vacations or “bleisure” trips.
We’re tired of swimming in a flood of inconsistent, untrustworthy, and highly-promoted destination content.
We’re sick of our online activity being tracked and sold to target us with advertising and scams.
And we refuse to be funneled into overcrowded, inauthentic, and unsustainable mass tourism that mainly benefits big corporations and does little to conserve places or support local economies and disadvantaged communities.
That’s why we’re building GoGood as an innovative community-based solution to these interrelated problems of sustainable tourism supply, demand, and market access.
GoGood is a one-stop, easy, trusted resource to research and plan enriching, sustainable trips.
Recent consumer surveys show that over 75% of travelers worldwide want to travel more sustainably.
But, many travelers feel overwhelmed with the effort and lack of guidance. They want more information to use in their trip planning process, including:
- Recommendations for locally owned businesses/restaurants
- Information on how to engage with local cultures and communities
- Transportation options with lower environmental impact
- Environmentally conscious lodging
- Recommendations for destinations that support Indigenous culture and heritage
- Walkable or bikeable destination recommendations
- Eco-friendly activity recommendations
- Recommendations for destinations that are not over-visited
GoGood makes it easy to find these things with the help of local knowledge and global sustainability standards.
Places and experiences featured on the GoGood app are nominated by local people and assessed against internationally recognized environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards and progress toward the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The app gives recognition and targeted market access to businesses and destinations to understand and enhance their sustainability. It encourages and helps them pursue sustainability assessments and certifications, such as the Good Travel Seal, B-Corp Certification, Travelife, and others listed by Travalyst.
Local nonprofit projects are also showcased, with opportunities for travelers to support conservation, education, and sustainability projects through donations and volunteering.
At its core, GoGood is a community-based market solution for conservation and sustainable economic development, executed through thoughtful tourism promotion, knowledge sharing, and destination stewardship.
The GoGood mobile and web apps are free to use—without subscriptions, in-app purchases, or advertising—making them the go-to source of destination information for smart, thoughtful travelers.
Instead of advertising, subscriptions, or selling your personal data, GoGood is supported by sponsorships, like a public broadcasting corporation.
Sponsors include organizations and individuals who want to increase the sustainability and authenticity of the places they care about.
Sponsorships support the creation and curation of rich Destination Mapguides for countries, cities, regions, parks, water bodies, heritage sites, and routes—featuring their most authentic and sustainable lodging, dining, shopping, attractions, events, and tours.
Potential sponsors are reviewed and vetted for their commitment to sustainability. They may suggest and offer content for places, but do not have final editorial control over destination profiles.
Building out Destination MapGuide content begins with listening and conversations with Indigenous and local communities to ensure that the places and experiences featured, and the stories of the place and its people, are accurately expressed and carefully promoted to benefit them.
Principles and practices of economic and environmental justice and regenerative development are core to GoGood’s mission, vision, and implementation. This approach enables authenticity, trust, and positive local impact—helping places regenerate from historical injustice and conflict, and end the use of tourism as a method of colonization and exploitation.
Learn more about GoGood Sponsorship Opportunities.
GoGood will launch in February 2025.
Of course, it will take time to research places and build rich content for every country and destination. GoGood 1.0 will focus on the app user experience and content for select destinations.
Contact us below if you want your destination to be among the first to launch and test, and help shape the GoGood platform.
Sign up above to get updates and announcements and be among the first users.
We’re a team of sustainable travel experts, product creators, editors, and do-gooders who believe in the transformative power of authentic, sustainable travel for the planet, destinations, and individuals.
GoGood is a program of Our COMMON Foundation, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization based in Boulder, Colorado, USA—in the ancestral homelands of the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Ute and other Native American nations.
Green Destinations and other sustainable tourism experts and certification authorities help us assess destinations and businesses to feature on the app. Other sustainable tourism NGOs, brands, and consultants aligned with The Future of Tourism Coalition provide further support and guidance.
Our team is led by Frank Biasi, a seasoned product creator, award-winning producer and editor, geographer, and conservationist who has created websites, apps, and maps for National Geographic, The Nature Conservancy, UNESCO, and other trusted brands for over 30 years.
The GoGood app is designed and built by Inspiring Apps, an award-winning mobile and web app design and development company based in Boulder.
We are seeking local experts, destination stewards, and partners to help implement MapGuides in every country and region. Contact us below to participate in a GoGood program as a local editor, ambassador, or partner.
There are many ways to support GoGood and sustain the places you love
We are building the platform and seeking partners and team members to help research and identify the best places and experiences to feature, and edit and produce rich content about places and experiences.
GoGood is designed and built as an open, not-for-profit, community platform to serve all members of the sustainable travel movement, including destinations, businesses, NGOs, and consultants. Please contact us if you think your organization can contribute to and use the platform to advance your sustainable travel, economic development, and conservation goals.
Explore opportunities to get involved in GoGood
Help us build and grow GoGood
Contact Us
Please share your thoughts and questions about GoGood or nominate places to feature.
We respect your privacy and will never sell or use your information for commercial purposes.
GoGood has joined the movement to reshape the Future of Tourism.
We have signed on to the Guiding Principles launched by the Future of Tourism Coalition.
As a signatory, we commit to place destination needs at the center of the GoGood platform and do our part to build a better tomorrow for travel and tourism.
GoGood is a member of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC).
The GSTC establishes and manages global sustainable standards with the aim of increasing sustainable tourism knowledge and practices among public and private stakeholders.
