Altezza Travel Becomes a Certified B Corp

In July 2025, Altezza Travel became a certified B Corp. This certification is a trusted, independent sign that our company puts real effort into supporting employees, protecting the environment, and contributing to the region where we work.

The process is long and demanding. Preparation usually takes about three years, and the application and review can take up to six more months. Most companies never make it past the first step: nine out of ten drop out after the initial assessment. Even among those who continue, more than half don’t reach the minimum score.

To put it in perspective, since 2006, about 300,000 companies have started the process. Just over 10,000 have actually achieved B Corp status.

That’s why we see this as one of our biggest milestones of 2025. It was a team effort from start to finish: our accountants gathered receipts for donations to wildlife protection projects. HR reviewed pay records and volunteer activities. Managers compiled detailed reports for B Lab, the nonprofit that oversees the certification. Altogether, we invested over 1,000 hours of work to get it done.

Before Altezza Travel, only five companies in Tanzania had earned B Corp certification. We are the sixth, the first from Moshi, and the first among local tour operators. We hope other companies from Kilimanjaro will follow our example. For tourism to have a genuinely positive impact, the entire industry needs to work together.

What Is B Corp certification?

Today, many businesses run blogs about how they care for the environment. Some companies exaggerate their efforts. They inflate donation numbers or plant a few trees, take photos, and then reuse those same pictures to promote “new” projects.

This practice even has a name: “greenwashing.”

B Corp certification makes sure a company’s values and actions are real. It confirms they are consistent, measurable, and meet international standards for social responsibility.

In other words, employees in these companies work in safe conditions, and the company’s operations not only avoid harming nature but also help restore it.

For example, making a one-time donation is not enough. To earn points toward certification, a company must donate at least 0.5% of its annual revenue every year. Paying salaries on time is not enough either – those wages must meet the real cost of living in the country.

This is why we believe B Corp certification is trustworthy. Well-known B Corps include Patagonia, Kickstarter, Ben & Jerry’s, and Coursera. The movement has also received recognition from figures such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Angelina Jolie, former U.S. Presidents Al Gore and Bill Clinton, Nobel Prize–winning economist Robert Shiller, and business leaders like Richard Branson of Virgin and Paul Polman of Unilever.

How does the certification work?

The B Corp certification process has two main stages: a preliminary assessment and a full verification of the company’s practices.

Preliminary Assessment

In this stage, the company fills out an online questionnaire. The questions are grouped into five categories, each with 10 to 50 questions. Together, they focus on the key issues in each area:

Governance – Does the company consider the interests of employees and local communities when making decisions? How do these decisions affect the environment?

Workers – How does the company treat its employees?

Environment – What impact does the company’s work have on nature?

Community – How does the company contribute to the region where it operates?

Customers – Does the company make the world safer and better for its clients?

Once the form is completed, the company receives a preliminary score. To move forward, it must score at least 80 out of 200 points

Verification

If the preliminary score is above 80 points, the company can request verification. B Lab assigns an auditor who reviews evidence for every claim made.

For example, if a company reports donating $50,000 each year to charities, it must provide letters from those organizations confirming the donations. The same applies to employee data – B Lab checks payroll records and compares salaries to the country’s living wage standards.

If the verification is successful, the company pays a membership fee and gains the right to use the B Corp logo.

According to B Lab, most companies that apply score around 50 points at the first assessment. Reaching the required level usually takes several years.

Fewer than 1% of certified companies score above 150 points. The highest score so far is 168.6, earned by Y.O.U Underwear, a small underwear maker from Oxford. Patagonia, the well-known outdoor gear company, follows with a score of 166.

Altezza Travel’s results

For Altezza Travel, the certification process took five months. We completed the questionnaire and applied in February 2024. After several months of review, we received the result at the end of July 2025: Altezza Travel scored 87.7 points. This is a strong outcome for a first certification, especially for a company based in Africa.

Some criteria that allow companies in Europe or the United States to earn extra points are not available to us. But scoring higher is not our main goal. What matters to us is making the greatest possible positive impact and encouraging more Tanzanian companies to join the B Corp movement.

Our team believes this approach will help us reach the top 1% of certified companies after our recertification in 2028.

This time, we succeeded thanks to the following initiatives. 

Taking care of employees

Salaries at Altezza Travel are on average 2.5 times higher than the industry standard. Pay for the local managers is comparable to salaries in Eastern Europe.

Unskilled workers without English – such as gardeners and general laborers – earn three to four times more than they would working on a farm.

All wages are fully formalized and taxed. For each employee, we pay mandatory contributions to national insurance funds, about 30% of the payroll. These contributions secure a pension and provide state compensation in case of disability, in addition to company support.

We open bank accounts for all employees. In rural Tanzania, this is still uncommon.

We also provide paternity leave. Under Tanzanian labor law, new fathers are entitled to three days off. We increased this to two weeks.

We cover the education of children whose parents worked with us and have since passed away. Altezza Travel is a large company, and over 11 years some colleagues have sadly left us—some during the COVID pandemic, others due to old age. None have died at work, but in every case we take responsibility for their children’s education.

Medical support is also part of our policy. Public health insurance in Tanzania does not cover all services. When our employees or their family members need urgent care, we cover the hospital bills directly.

We also employ a sustainability officer who oversees working conditions, independent of HR. Her main measure of success is how happy employees feel working at Altezza Travel. By talking informally with staff and observing their daily work, she helps us identify problems that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Working with suppliers

We work only with responsible partners

All of our suppliers share Altezza Travel’s values: they care for their employees and protect nature. Each supplier signs a pledge agreeing to basic principles of working with us. To make sure these commitments are real, we visit their offices twice a year and speak directly with their staff.

There are two categories of suppliers we will never work with:

– Hotels that keep wild animals on their grounds while posing as rehabilitation centers. In Tanzania, some popular hotels let zebras, antelopes, or even lion cubs roam freely on their property. These are not rescued animals. They were captured as young in the wild and brought to the hotels under the pretense of rehabilitation. Over time, they lose their natural instincts and allow people to pet and pose with them. Such practices draw many tourists, but we strongly oppose them.

Wild animals belong in the savanna. Truly sick or injured animals should be treated in official rehabilitation centers. Our company funds the rehabilitation of several orphaned elephants, lions, and a leopard. They are cared for at TAWIRI facilities, which are closed to visitors. Once they recover and can survive on their own, they will be released back into the wild.

– Suppliers whose owners are involved in the hunting business. Altezza Travel is firmly against hunting. Killing animals has nothing to do with sport. In East Africa, trophy hunting is a lucrative industry, with fees starting at $30,000. Some business owners get involved because of the profits.

If we learn that a supplier’s owner participates in hunting, we immediately end the partnership.

Supporting the growth of our partners

Suppliers who share our values receive more business from Altezza Travel. For example, if two hotels offer the same level of service, we will choose the one that treats its employees and wildlife better, even if it is not the cheaper option.

Our support goes beyond sales. Drawing on the results of Altezza Travel’s social projects, we created a guide that helps partners quickly introduce responsible management practices, improve employee care, and protect animals.

Protecting wildlife and restoring ecosystems

Protecting Wildlife and Restoring Ecosystems

Our main projects in wildlife and ecosystem protection include:

Serengeti De-Snaring Project. Since 2019, Altezza Travel has sponsored the Serengeti De-Snaring Project. This initiative, led by the Frankfurt Zoological Society, removes wire snares from Serengeti National Park.

More details: https://fzs.org/en/programs/tanzania/serengeti-national-park/de-snarin

Protecting endangered birds in the Amani Forest. Deforestation in the Amani Forest, in western Tanzania, threatens the long-billed apalis with extinction. In 2024, we provided a grant to the Nature Tanzania team, which developed a plan to stop logging, support local farmers, and save the species.

More details: https://altezzatravel.com/articles/long-billed-tailorbird 

Firefighting equipment for Kilimanjaro National Park. In 2020 and 2022, wildfires on Kilimanjaro destroyed thousands of trees. More than 200 of our porters and guides joined the firefighting efforts. That experience showed us something important: the risk of fire can’t be eliminated, but the response time can be improved.

To make this possible, we funded the installation of firefighting containers at the start of each climbing route. There are six containers in total. Each is stocked with equipment for 100 people – shovels, chainsaws, buckets, and other essential tools.

Now, up to 600 people can gear up and head out to fight a fire in less than two hours. 

More details: https://altezzatravel.com/articles/altezza-firefighting-containers 

Forest restoration. Since 2022, Altezza Travel has been planting trees in the Rundugai area, near the Chemka Hot Springs. Our goal is to restore the ecosystem to its state in the 1980s. As of July 2025, we have planted more than 10,000 young trees.

More details: https://altezzatravel.com/articles/altezza-restores-forest

Wildlife Rescue Projects. Altezza Travel helps care for several young elephants, a rhinoceros, a few lions, and a leopard. These animals are under the supervision of local wildlife authorities, while we cover the costs of veterinary care and food.

Waste Management and Water Responsibility. Altezza Travel is one of the few companies in Tanzania that sorts waste into several categories: plastic, paper, glass, and organic matter. Everything that can be recycled is sent to certified centers. For example, we deliver glass to the Shanga Social Center, where Tanzanians with disabilities turn it into jewelry and tableware.

At our Aishi Hotel, we installed a modern water filtration system that makes well water safe to drink. This allowed us to stop buying bottled water and cut our overall plastic use by 80%.

You can read about other Altezza Travel initiatives on our blog: 

https://altezzatravel.com/articles/about

What’s next

We will continue to care for our team and support projects that protect Africa’s wildlife and ecosystems. As Tanzania’s popularity grows, so do our opportunities. We will share updates about new projects on our blog and social media.

At the end of 2025, we will publish our first open annual report.

What you can do

The planet is our shared home. Companies in the B Corp movement are working to make it greener, cleaner, and fairer. Next time you buy something, try choosing a producer with B Corp certification. If you plan a trip, look for the B Corp logo on the company’s website.

And if you are thinking about visiting Tanzania – get in touch with us at Altezza Travel.

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