This travel guide wants you to 'hate' places in order to protect them

As travel resumes, some pre-pandemic problems are also resurfacing; every year, more and more tourists visit the world and damage the environment. So a new campaign from Guides Tao, a French travel guide brand dedicated to sustainable tourism, is using trolling as a tool to protect some of the world's most fragile tourist destinations.

Agency TBWA/Paris created "Hate to Protect," which encourages people to write negative comments on travel review sites, suggesting people visit other, less heavily-visited destinations instead. 

Guides Tao started with its own negative comments, selecting natural areas that are likely to be exposed in the coming months to a large influx of tourists, which could cause irreversible damage to ecosystems and endemic species. It ensured that the targeted locations were free of economic activity, so that the negative reviews would not penalise any trade or employment.

The campaign now continues with a video, seen here, encouraging travelers to leave visit the website, which will suggest places for them to leave their own negative review, or to suggest other sensitive places that need protection. They can sign a charter to protect the world's most visited sites.