In 2025 we counted everything. 50 people, 60 guides, roughly 250 suppliers, $41,687 in national park entrance fees, and 42 hours of training per employee. The result is our first sustainability report prepared with reference to the GRI Standards, covering 1 January to 31 December 2025.
Sustainability Report 2025
Every figure on this page comes from the full report. No form, no email address — prepared with reference to the GRI Standards and free to read.
Download The ReportGRI is the reporting framework used by 77% of the world’s 250 largest companies (KPMG Survey of Sustainability Reporting, 2024). It has sector standards for oil and gas, coal, mining, and agriculture, aquaculture and fishing — and none yet for tourism. It was built for organisations with sustainability departments. We used it anyway, because we could not find a reason why the size of a company should determine the rigour of its disclosure.
2025 at a Glance
Nine numbers that summarise the year. Every one is drawn from the report.
The People Behind the Trips
Horizontes employs 50 people, 36 of them women — 72% of the team. Women hold two of five board seats and two senior management positions. The company was founded in 1984 by two women, Margarita Forero Cabezas and Tamara Budowski Palma, and has been owned by five partners with 100% Costa Rican capital since 2018.
Guides had a big year
We contracted 60 guides in 2025, against a typical season of 25 to 30. Every one holds a valid Naturalist or Authorised Tour Guide credential issued by the Costa Rican Tourism Institute, plus workers’ compensation insurance; driver-guides must additionally produce full vehicle and tourist-transport documentation. We also ran our own Horizontes Guide Course, with 48 participants across guides and staff, including a session on emergency management delivered by a Red Cross rescuer.
Training, wellbeing and a new app
Staff received an average of 42 hours of training in 2025, covering everything from the Tour Plan booking system to AI tools and environmental education. We continued Equilibrium, the wellbeing programme begun in 2024, which brings in psychologists and a nutritionist. And we launched PRO GUIDE, our own app for managing itineraries, daily reports and day-to-day feedback with guides in the field.
No accidents were recorded in our offices over the last 12 months, and no reports of corruption or privacy violations were filed. Nor were any gender-discrimination complaints.
Communities as Partners, Not Photo Stops
The change we are proudest of is that several communities are now suppliers to Horizontes rather than stops on an itinerary. The report calls it what it is — “a better distribution of profits from tourism operations”.
Where that is happening: Rancho Quemado and La Palma on the Osa Peninsula, and rural tourism entrepreneurs in Caño Negro and Los Chiles in the Northern Zone. Our supplier criteria give priority to small and medium local enterprises and associations, micro and small enterprises still in development, and inclusive businesses — and, ideally, to those already holding a national certification such as CST, Bandera Azul or Esencial Costa Rica.
We train them too
In 2025 Horizontes ran training for female entrepreneurs in Caño Negro, Los Chiles and Bijagua, covering soft skills, customer service, marketing strategy and the use of AI tools. Separately, we trained rural families in La Palma and Rancho Quemado on hosting and accommodating visiting international students.
Indigenous partnerships
Two training sessions in 2025, for staff and guides, focused on the current situation of indigenous territories and on the development of indigenous rural tourism. In practice, that meant promoting cultural activities led by the Maleku people in the northern zone for our wholesale clients, and providing financial support to Ngöbe women through the purchase of artisanal materials for bags given to travellers.
Working with a foreign partner organisation, we coordinated the logistics to rebuild a plastic-wood bridge in the La Leona area of the Osa Peninsula in 2025. It is the kind of thing that never makes a brochure and matters a great deal locally.
Nature, and the Numbers That Come With It
Costa Rica makes some of this easier than it would be anywhere else. The country generated 98.6% of its electricity from renewable sources in 2025 (ICE generation data, verified by LSQA), and has taken forest cover from a low of around 40% in 1987 to close to 60%, with 26% of national territory protected (World Bank, 2022).
What we contributed in 2025:
- $41,687 in national park entrance fees, paid on behalf of travellers — money that goes directly into the protected-area system.
- An approximately 34% reduction in office electricity consumption against 2024.
- Itineraries run free of single-use plastics — supplied by Horizontes and our contracted providers — for one of our main business partners, across their travellers’ full stay in Costa Rica.
- Separated recycling of paper, cardboard, Tetra Pak, glass, aluminium and plastic, delivered fortnightly to the Municipality of San José. We have run internal recycling campaigns since 2006.
- 78 volunteer hours of trail cleaning at Tapantí National Park, plus a talk about the park and the work of its rangers, attended by staff and family members.
Carbon: what we actually do
We inventory the emissions from staff flights, fuel and electricity, and offset them through a partnership with FONAFIFO, Costa Rica’s National Forestry Financing Fund, which channels payments into forest conservation and restoration. This covers our own operational emissions only. It is not a claim about the emissions of any trip we sell. Through our Fundación Horizontes programme El Buen Viajero, travellers can choose to buy FONAFIFO carbon credits against their own itinerary.
We want to be precise: buying carbon credits does not make a trip carbon neutral. Offsetting compensates for emissions that have already happened. The reductions we can genuinely point to are the ones inside our own operation — the electricity cut, the hybrid working model, staff carpooling, and the plastic-free itineraries.
Fundación Horizontes
Our foundation exists so that giving is coordinated rather than random. When a traveller wants to donate, the foundation contacts leaders in the communities on that traveller’s itinerary, identifies what is actually needed, and matches the donation to it. Needs are defined locally, not by us.
In 2025 that produced, among other things:
- 28 backpacks of school supplies for children at the San Miguel de Tucurrique school in Turrialba.
- 60 Christmas gifts for children in the communities of Mollejones and San Miguel de Turriac, Turrialba.
- Clothing and shoe donations for people without homes and migrant families, via Fundación Lloverá and Casa María Auxiliadora.
Volunteering, by travellers and by us
Visiting student groups spent 2025 repairing playground equipment in Rancho Quemado, reforesting the area around the sports field in La Palma, painting murals at La Palma’s community facilities, and painting the interactive play area at the Mariano Quirós school. Internally, 43 staff volunteered at the Food Bank, 26 cleaned trails at Tapantí, 21 gave blood, and 22 raised ₡564,500 for the 8 Horas de Amor campaign supporting terminally ill children.
Four Decades of This
None of the above started in 2025. The report traces a line back to 1984.
Travel With Us
Everything above exists because of trips people actually took. Tell us what you’d like to see in Costa Rica and we’ll design the route around you.
Plan Your Experience Browse Sample ItinerariesFrequently Asked Questions
Horizontes Nature Experiences has designed nature and culture journeys throughout Costa Rica since 1984. The company is 100% Costa Rican owned, and its sustainability performance is certified at Élite level under the Costa Rican Tourism Institute’s CST scheme. Unless otherwise linked, figures in this article are drawn from the Horizontes Nature Experiences Sustainability Report 2025, covering 1 January to 31 December 2025, prepared with reference to the GRI Standards.
External sources: GRI on the KPMG Survey of Sustainability Reporting 2024 · GRI Sector Program · Programa CST, ICT · GSTC-Recognized Standards · ICE 2025 generation data · World Bank, Costa Rica forest conservation
