“Local hiring” gets thrown around a lot in sustainable tourism circles. And on paper, it sounds simple: hire locals, keep more money in the community, and good things follow.
But I’ve lived and built businesses in Colombia and Peru. I’ve recruited teams, employed locals, navigated labor laws, and learned, sometimes the hard way, that the reality is far more complex.
In Colombia, around 55% of the workforce operates with informal contracts. In Peru, that number climbs to 70%. For microenterprises in Colombia, where most international development and “regenerative tourism” projects focus their efforts, that number climbs closer to 80%. That means most workers don’t receive health benefits, pension contributions, or legal protections. They also don’t contribute to the tax system. So even when you’re “hiring local,” you may still be plugging into an ecosystem where workers are underpaid, overworked, and completely unprotected.
What They Don’t Tell You About Hiring Local
Read Back of House, an insider’s look at the hidden economics, labor systems, and operational sustainability challenges shaping tourism across Colombia and Peru.
In Colombia and Peru, the total cost of employing someone through a formal employment relationship can be significantly higher than their base salary. In addition to wages, employers are generally responsible for a range of legally required benefits and contributions, including health insurance, pension contributions, Social Security obligations, and statutory bonuses. As a result, the overall annual employment cost can substantially exceed an employee’s stated monthly salary.
Employment regulations can also make workforce reductions costly and administratively complex. Depending on the circumstances, employers may be required to provide severance payments or other forms of compensation when terminating employees. Labor laws are nuanced, and noncompliance can expose businesses to financial penalties, legal disputes, and other liabilities.
I experienced these challenges firsthand.
When WhereNext Creative expanded to support USAID’s Destination Nature sustainable tourism initiative, we hired a talented team of Colombian creatives and full-time staff. The project ended unexpectedly, and with little guidance from partners, we were left financially and legally responsible. Under Colombian labor law, we had to meet our obligations to employees.
As a result, our company covered substantial costs so that team members received the compensation and benefits to which they were entitled. The experience underscored the importance of carefully structuring contracts, understanding local employment regulations, and maintaining contingency plans when operating in international markets. It also gave me a keen understanding of why a small business might choose to hire staff informally: it’s expensive, adds cash-flow risk, and requires significant paperwork and legal work to manage.
So What Do We Do?
We ask better questions.
Is it more ethical to send guests to a global hotel chain that complies with labor law or a “local” operator who cycles through informal labor with no protections?
At WhereNext DMC, we decided to go deeper. Community-first travel starts with a real economic framework, one where local stakeholders earn not just wages, but livelihoods. Everyone we work with, guides, chefs, drivers, hoteliers, must be treated as an entrepreneur, someone who directly profits from tourism and has a stake in its success.
If they don’t see this industry as a better option than illicit mining, coca farming, or even an informal contract at a bakery, then sustainability is just a brochure word.
Without this economic foundation, sustainable and regenerative tourism are philosophies, not actions.
I think about the birdwatching guide I met in a former guerrilla zone in Colombia while producing The Birders documentary film for the Colombian government. After years of living in conflict, he’s now building a life around conservation and tourism and sees a real path forward.
Or the couple we hired to run Finca Gualiva, WhereNext DMC’s farm and rainforest reserve in Colombia. My wife, Anita, who leads HR for the largest company in Latin America, and I took over the finca only to find that the existing staff was planning to leave the following month. We urgently needed new caretakers. We found a couple with glowing online reviews from their time at a locally owned agrotourism lodge that regularly hosted foreign guests who felt they were traveling responsibly by booking “locally.” When we interviewed them, we discovered that they did not have an employment contract. They were on call 24/7, paid only when guests were present, and had never received a paid vacation. One of them was told she’d be given “months of unpaid leave” during her pregnancy as a “benefit.”
Anita walked them through Colombian labor law, including legally required paid maternity leave, vacation, and retirement contributions, and drew up their first official employment contracts. They started work at Finca Gualiva the next day.
That’s what community-first looks like in practice for me, not in theory.
And that’s the standard we’re working toward every day at WhereNext DMC.
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