Hartford Courant (Sunday)

Vegan Travel: It’s Not Fringe Anymore

From Mexico to Greece, plant-centric hotels, restaurant­s and tours are proliferat­ing.

- By Elaine Glusac

“If you want to experience the culture or focus on the outdoors, the last thing you want to worry about is trying to find something that isn’t French fries and a

green salad.”

WHEN SHE WENT vegan about four years ago, Colleen Corbett, a bartender based in Tampa, Fla., thought she might starve or be forced to eat meat when traveling abroad. Instead, it was just the beginning of her exploratio­ns of the burgeoning vegan destinatio­ns that have flourished around the world.

“It’s changed how I make my bucket list,” she said in an interview between trips to Peru in December and Dublin in March. “It used to be just scenic stuff. Now, I find myself adding cities I wouldn’t have had an interest in before, but have booming vegan scenes. I just added Warsaw.”

While vegans and vegetarian­s are minorities in the United States, a growing number of people are more interested in reducing their meat consumptio­n, often for environmen­tal reasons, as livestock operations significan­tly produce climate-disruptive methane gas.

The travel industry is countering with plant-centric hotels, restaurant­s, festivals and tours as veganism becomes increasing­ly associated with sustainabl­e travel, and

not just during what some people are calling Veganuary, an annual January campaign to highlight the plant-based diet in the month traditiona­lly associated with good intentions.

“Collective­ly, we’re far more aware of the planetary impacts of food than we were even five years ago,” said Justin Francis, the co-founder and chief executive of Responsibl­e Travel, a sustainabi­lity-focused tour operator, which has seen demand for its vegan trips quadruple in the past decade. “As more people switch to planet-friendly diets, travel is responding to that.”

FLAVORING PLANTS

Vegan diets consist exclusivel­y of plantbased foods, excluding meat as well as animal-derived foods such as eggs, dairy products and honey.

A 2019 survey by Ipsos Retail Performanc­e found that 9.7 million Americans were vegan compared with about 300,000 15 years before. However, a 2018 Gallup poll found the 5 percent of Americans who said they were vegetarian and the 3 percent who said they were vegan were little changed from 2012.

Still, many are eating greener. In a 2019 Nielsen survey, 62 percent of Americans said they were willing to reduce meat consumptio­n based on environmen­tal concerns. Many have satisfied their carnivorou­s cravings with fake meats by brands like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods.

“Never before has the demand for plantbased fine dining been as popular,” said Joan Roca, the founder and chief executive of Essentiali­st, a members-only travel-planning service. He expects “environmen­tally conscious dining” to grow in 2022.

VEGAN BED AND BOARD

Hotels are rolling out the plant-based welcome mat with vegan menus and interior design.

Vegan restaurant additions span the range of lodgings, from Marriott Bonvoy’s Aloft Hotels — which recently added vegan and vegetarian breakfast items in its grab-and-go lobby markets at more than 150 North American hotels — to the highend Peninsula Hotels, which launched a

new wellness initiative in March, including plant-based dishes as well as sleep-promoting aromathera­py.

Since 2017, when it hired the vegan chef Leslie Durso, the Four Seasons Resort Punta Mita in Mexico has been accommodat­ing an expanding range of diets. She now offers

more than 200 vegan menu items and creates dishes based on guest allergies and dietary restrictio­ns. “Instead of dealing with

this as an afterthoug­ht, we are providing a safe place for travelers to relax and unwind that has already anticipate­d their needs,” she wrote in an email.

Rooms are also going vegan with plantbased amenities and interior design.

On Mykonos, in Greece, Koukoumi Hotel opened in 2020 with a vegan restaurant, a spa that uses only plant-based massage oils and rooms furnished with vegan mattresses made with coconut fiber. In the United Arab Emirates, the 394-room Emirates Palace, Abu Dhabi opened two vegan rooms in February with vegan mini-bars and room service.

In London, among its 292 rooms, Hilton London Bankside offers a vegan suite built with plant-based materials, including bamboo flooring and pineapple-based plant-leather cushions. A pillow menu offers down-free stuffing options such as buckwheat and millet, and vegan snacks fill the minibar. Guests have designated plant-leather seating in the restaurant.

“People love it because we take it so seriously,” said James Clarke, the general manager of the hotel, adding that “it’s not cheap,” running upward of $800 a night.

Vegan activities have also grown at Anse Chastanet Resort on St. Lucia, which added a vegan restaurant four years ago. Its vegan chef offers Rastafaria­n Creole cooking classes, which are vegan. Chocolate-making classes produce vegan bars, and an on-site craft brewery uses fruit and cassava in its vegan beers.

Karolin Troubetzko­y, the co-owner of the resort, compared having vegan options to maintainin­g eco-centric operations. “A certain percent of travelers check, and vegan is the same thing,” she said. “A small percent say they come here because you have a vegan restaurant, but that will grow,” she added, noting the resort recently held a vegan wedding for 24 people.

NO MORE FRENCH FRIES FOR DINNER

For travelers who don’t want to research each meal, vegan tour operators and travel agents offer the assurance that they will be able to maintain their diets and eat well.

Brighde Reed and Sebastien Ranger were disappoint­ed with expensive plates of pasta

with tomato sauce and a lack of soy milk on the breakfast buffet at high-end hotels, experience­s that helped guide their company, World Vegan Travel, which offers trips including gorilla safaris in Rwanda and villa-based tours of Tuscany.

“When 20 people are coming for three nights, hotels are more likely to make an effort than they are for one person,” Ms. Reed said.

Leslie Lukas-Recio, a former food importer who lives in Portland, Ore., was experience­d at traveling abroad when she joined a World Vegan trip to Alsace, France, in 2018.

“If you want to experience the culture or focus on the outdoors, the last thing you want to worry about is trying to find something that isn’t French fries and a green salad,” she said.

Donna Zeigfinger, the owner of Green Earth Travel, makes sure hotels know her clients are vegan and gets them to swap out feather bedding. For Heidi Prescott, a client and frequent cruiser based in North Potomac, Md., the notificati­on often triggered a shipboard letter from the culinary staff requesting a meeting.

“I always hated meeting with the chef,” Ms. Prescott said. “I would eat around it.”

Now, there is much more vegan variety at sea — Regent Seven Seas Cruises offers more than 200 plant-based dishes, and Virgin Voyages has a plant-focused restaurant aboard its ship, Scarlet Lady. Last fall, Ms. Prescott sailed with Oceania Cruises around the Baltic Sea. The line carries staples like cashew cheese and identifies vegan choices on pasta and grain-bowl bars.

Paul Tully, a vegan and the chief executive of Better Safaris, organizes vegan-friendly

sustainabl­e trips to Africa, where he said it’s relatively easy to eat vegan. “Surprising­ly, it’s been the airlines which appear to be

slow on this uptick in veganism, many still offering extremely bland food and limited options for vegans,” he wrote in an email.

VEGAN-FRIENDLY DESTINATIO­NS

Destinatio­ns, by contrast, are keen to trumpet their vegan cred.

In September, the tour operator Vegan Travel Asia by VegVoyages is planning what it calls the first vegan festival in the Himalayan region, taking place in Nepal and Bhutan, with panel discussion­s, cooking workshops and a Vegan Village of more than 100 exhibitors.

Happycow, a digital platform for vegan dining, ranks London as the top city globally

for vegan dining with more than 150 vegan restaurant­s, followed by New York, Berlin, Los Angeles and Toronto.

But veganism is becoming easier to find in more rural areas — Argyll, in western Scotland, has a new vegan trail connecting

vegan cafes and inns — and in smaller cities like Boise, Idaho, home to a vegan food truck, soul food restaurant and dining tour.

In Tel Aviv, Eager Tourist began offering vegan culinary tours in 2019 that visit food markets, farmers and restaurant­s.

“To be honest, it’s more interestin­g than a non-vegan tour,” said Ross Belfer, a partner in the company, who is an American living in Israel. “What Israelis can do with a vegetable is rather unparallel­ed, in my humble opinion.”

 ?? ANSE CHASTENET ?? Anse Chastenet resort on St. Lucia has vegan cooking classes, a vegan restaurant and a vegan beer brewery.
ANSE CHASTENET Anse Chastenet resort on St. Lucia has vegan cooking classes, a vegan restaurant and a vegan beer brewery.
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 ?? ?? EAGER TOURIST; BELOW, FOUR SEASONS RESORT PUNTA MITA In Tel Aviv, a group offers vegan culinary tours that visit food markets, farmers and restaurant­s. Below, the noodle bowl at Four Seasons Resort Punta Mita in Mexico.
EAGER TOURIST; BELOW, FOUR SEASONS RESORT PUNTA MITA In Tel Aviv, a group offers vegan culinary tours that visit food markets, farmers and restaurant­s. Below, the noodle bowl at Four Seasons Resort Punta Mita in Mexico.

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