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Have a good trip with the Good Trip Index

The Holiday Extras guide to travelling ethically, sustainably and well. This is the Good Trip Index - updated for 2023.

Travel sustainably. Leave only footprints. Support local businesses in the country you visit.

But make sure those local businesses are kind to their animals and pay a living wage to their employees. Try not to support oppressive regimes, and before you go check the country's record on press freedoms, LGBTQI+ rights, the rights of women and sustainability…

It's a lot to remember. Choosing to travel well is hard, and a holiday shouldn't be a chore. But for many of us, it's worth a little extra effort to travel responsibly.

So to help make travelling responsibly less of a hassle, we pulled together seven of the definitive country-level indices that cover the main ethical issues UK holidaymakers told us were important to them when deciding where to go on holiday*. Sustainable travel. Human rights, with a separate index for both women's rights and LGBTQI+ rights. Press freedom. Animal welfare. And wellbeing and quality of life in the country.

Map of countries on the Have a good trip index?auto=compress&auto=format

The Good Trip Index 2023

Taken together, our meta-index produces one simple list which you can refer to when picking a destination – without having to trawl through dozens of different sources when you should be taking a break.

The top 20 and bottom 10 countries on the Good Trip Index

Last year's index

This is the second year for our Good Trips Index, so see below for last year's numbers and how things have changed since 2022.

Good Trips Index 2022

Top destinations to have a good trip

1. Denmark | Great for quality of life and press freedom

Woman in Copenhagen, Denmark Copenhagen travel guide

2. Switzerland | Great for human rights, LGBT travel, animal welfare and quality of life

Mountains in Switzerland

3. Sweden | Best for sustainability

Lakeside cabin in Sweden Sweden travel guide

4. Norway | Best for press freedom and women's rights

Red huts looking out on a fjord in Norway

5. Iceland | Great for quality of life

Canal in Amsterdam, Netherlands Iceland travel guide

6. Finland | Great for women's rights and sustainability

Ice swimming in Finland

7. New Zealand | Great for human rights and LGBT travel

Mountain in New Zealand

8. Germany | Great for animal welfare and quality of life

Reichstag Building in Berlin, Germany Germany travel guide

9. Canada | Great for LGBT travel

Innsbruck, Austria Canada travel guide

10. Ireland | Good for human rights and sustainability

Tallinn, Estonia Dublin travel guide

How did we make the Good Trip Index?

To compile our meta-index we have used seven different pieces of original research from seven different sources. The sources are deliberately chosen to offer a variety of political perspectives.

  • "Top Countries for Sustainable Tourism", Market research provider, Euromonitor International, March 2021
  • "Human Freedom Index", Cato Institute, 2023
  • "Women, Peace and Security Index", Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, 2021/22
  • "World Press Freedom Index", Reporters sans Frontiers, 2023
  • "Cost of Living Index", Numbeo, 2023
  • "Gay Travel Index", Spartacus, 2023
  • "Voiceless Animal Cruelty Index", undated

We have made reasonable efforts to check the completeness and validity of each source index. Some countries were missing from one or more source index. Where a country was missing from three or more, we omitted that country from consideration entirely. Where fewer data points were missing, we used the average for that dimension. Inevitably, this will create discrepancies, and regrettably disadvantage smaller and poorer countries that were overlooked by one or more of the original sources, but the alternative would be to exclude a large number of countries, primarily outside Western Europe and North America, which would be problematic in different ways.

Our index is intended primarily to inform travellers from the United Kingdom heading overseas, and is therefore focussed on what our research tells us are likely to be their ethical concerns about the countries they may choose to visit. This focus is inevitably Eurocentric, and produces results that privilege, for example, Scandinavia over sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. We fully acknowledge this limitation to our approach. Other researchers may wish to choose different criteria which would be of greater value to audiences expected to have different concerns or travelling from other parts of the world.

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