Explore these rising destinations for a sustainable, ethical trip
Planning a trip somewhere new? Check out our favourite destinations that have been climbing the rankings in our Good Trip Index.
Faster and smarter in the app... Open app
Have a good trip with the Good Trip Index
Discover how to travel more ethically, sustainably and mindfully with our updated 2025 Good Trip Index — your essential guide to making every journey count.
Short on time? Let us summarise this guide for you.
The Good Trip Index 2025 ranks the world's most ethical holiday destinations across seven key areas, including sustainability, animal welfare, press freedom, women's rights, LGBTQI+ rights and quality of life. Denmark, Norway and Sweden claim the top three spots, with Scandinavia dominating the upper reaches of the list overall. New Zealand is the standout pick for LGBTQI+ travellers, while Luxembourg leads on quality of life and Germany scores highly for sustainability and animal welfare. The index is designed to make responsible travel easier by combining seven major global indices into one simple, no-fuss guide for UK holidaymakers.
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.
The Good Trip Index 2025
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.
Top destinations to have a good trip
1. Denmark | Best for women's rights
2. Norway | Best for press freedom and democracy
3. Sweden | Best for animal welfare
4. Switzerland | Great for animal welfare and women's rights
5. Finland | Great for women's rights and sustainability
6. Luxembourg | Best for quality of life
7. Iceland | Great for democracy and women's rights
8. Netherlands | Good for quality of life and press freedom
9. Germany | Great for sustainability and animal welfare
10. New Zealand | Best for LGBT travel
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.
- "Environmental Performance Index", New Haven, CT: Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy, 2024
- "Freedom Index by Country", World Population Review, 2025
- "Women, Peace and Security Index", Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, 2024
- "World Press Freedom Index", Reporters Without Borders, 2024
- "Quality of Life Index", Numbeo, 2025
- "Gay Travel Index", Spartacus, 2025
- "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.
Most-popular articles
Smarter travel, made simple
The Holiday Extras app gives you instant access to your bookings, updates, and support—anytime, anywhere.
Let's take the hassle out of your holiday.
Sign up to our mailing list for more travel advice plus exclusive money-saving offers on your holiday extras!
No need to worry about your data, we take your privacy seriously.