We have designed the Hate to protect campaign to raise awareness of Guides Tao’s commitment towards sustainable tourism. To achieve this, we decided to use review platforms such as Google Maps and Tripadvisor in an original and brash way in order to deter and redirect tourists who wanted to go to places that are too fragile. In this way, we targeted travellers directly when they were choosing their holiday destinations. We also deployed a website and a PR campaign. Through the latter, we created a community of haters who suggested places to protect and comments to post.

Guides Tao was created in 2008, well before the trend for sustainable travel guides spread to all publishing houses, with Lonely Planet or Le Routard for instance.

Faced with its competitors’ opportunism, Guides Tao had to reaffirm the sincerity of its commitment to the planet with a strong and uncompromising idea: to preserve fragile places from tourism.

Guides Tao was created in 2008, long before the trend for sustainable travel guides spread to all publishing houses, with Lonely Planet or Le Routard for instance.

Unfortunately, the proliferation of competing guides with the same environmental credo has led to an erosion of Guides Tao's market share.

Faced with its competitors’ opportunism, Guides Tao had to reaffirm the sincerity of its commitment to the planet with a strong and uncompromising media idea: to preserve fragile places from mass tourism in favour of responsible and sustainable tourism

In 1950, there were 25 million tourists. By 2023, there will be 1.5 billion.

This massive influx will impact places that have been protected from tourism until now.

Guides Tao decided to act on a simple observation:

95% of people consult reviews on the Internet before travelling and 84% trust them.

To discourage tourists from going to vulnerable locations, we troll the most popular review platforms such as Google and TripAdvisor. We have posted negative reviews on each selected destination to make them undesirable online.

In the reviews, we have also suggested alternative locations to redirect tourists to suitable natural sites suggested in the Guides Tao.

Finally, with the hatetoprotect.com platform, Internet users have been able to take part in the campaign by sending in suggestions of places to protect, negative comments and by signing the charter for committed travellers.

In order to stand out from its competitors who are opportunistically surfing on the sustainable tourism trend, Guides Tao decided to highlight its commitments with a tone that no other guide could have assumed.

We therefore created the Hate To Protect operation based on a simple observation:

95% of people consult reviews on the Internet before travelling and 84% trust them.

We decided to act directly on the online review platforms, which allowed us to reach tourists when they were choosing their holiday destinations.

Next, we revealed the operation without revealing the places protected by the campaign. This allowed us to highlight Guides Tao’s commitment to responsible tourism to the general public.

The participatory platform hatetoprotect.com was then created in order to invite people who care about the environment to act.

Since January 2021, we have selected the sites to be protected with the help of the guides on site. We made sure that the selected places had no impact on the local economy so as not to penalise any jobs or businesses.

From February 2021 to date, we have posted hundreds of negative comments on review platforms such as Google Maps and TripAdvisor via hundreds of accounts and fake profiles.

In October 2021, we made the operation public via a PR campaign and social networks, in order to raise awareness about the importance of responsible tourism amongst a large number of people, of course without revealing the location of the places preserved by the operation.

Simultaneously, we launched the website Hatetoprotect.com in order to invite Internet users to take concrete action by sending places to be protected and opinions and by signing the charter of the committed traveller.

The Hate To Protect campaign has allowed Guides Tao to reach 3 different targets.

Firstly, we discouraged tourists from visiting vulnerable places with our negative comments.

Secondly, we reached the general public by publicising the operation and spreading it via a PR campaign. In this way, we increased brand awareness for Guides Tao and made the general public more aware of responsible and respectful tourism.

Finally, we enabled Internet users to act and be part of the campaign through the Hatetoprotect.com platform.

During the Hatetoprotect operation, more than 3,200 comments were posted, several hundreds of which were written and submitted by Internet users. The campaign has resulted in 36 sites being sustainably protected and a further 14 sites, which will be protected in the same way in 2022.

Guides Tao was mentioned for the first time in many national and international media.