Travelling as a vegan

Photo: Vegan Degustation at the multi-award winning Yellow Restaurant in Sydney.

Travelling as a vegan involves a whole extra layer of planning; food isn’t just functional; it can make or break a holiday experience. Most of us have been in the situation where the only vegan option is chips and a side salad and that’s ok for one meal, but if it’s every night, it can really take the pleasure out of a trip. It’s sometimes easier to book an Airbnb with a kitchen but, for me, cooking is one of the chores I want to escape from.

When travelling to a new city, I always search HappyCow.com to find the area with the most vegan cafes and restaurants and then book accommodation nearby. I’ve found that, as a bonus, those areas are often the most vibrant parts of a city with interesting bars, music and street life.

My days are usually planned by looking at where I can eat first, then seeing what interesting places happen to be nearby. It’s the opposite of how a “regular” tourist might plan their day.

Guided tours have been growing in popularity worldwide, including special interest tours for everything including dedicated vegan tours. There are now vegan tours available in most countries.

Going on a tour where everything is organised for you is really relaxing. Planning your trip becomes so easy, no more spending hours and hours doing research.  Local guides know of the best spots to go to, places that often aren’t in the tourist brochures and, importantly, you get varied and tasty vegan food at every meal.

While I was on tour in Italy with chef Miyoko Schinner, I was chatting with fellow vegans (seasoned tour-goers) about their future travel plans. Without exception they agreed that visiting Australia and New Zealand was their dream but they were concerned about the availability of good vegan food.

At the time, I’d recently stepped away from the vegan business I’d run for over 20 years and had taken a year to recover and regroup. I was looking for my next project and suddenly, one seemed to land right in front of me and the idea for Vegan Tours Australia was born.

I see these tours as an opportunity to build demand for and increase availability of vegan food. I’ve spent the last few months working with chefs to create and refine their vegan offerings primarily for our upcoming tours but with the goal that these newly created dishes will make it to their permanent menus. In each conversation I’ve raised our wider goals of reducing environmental impact, saving more animals, and increasing awareness of veganism, to benefit tour guests and local communities alike.

I chose Tasmania for our first tour: a Gourmet Vegan Tour of Tasmania featuring gourmet vegan food, 5-star accommodation and, of course, Tasmania’s stunning scenery. I teamed up with my old friend, and ex Animal Liberation NSW colleague, Sarah, and we spent time on the ground, eating at Tasmania’s best vegan-friendly restaurants (a tough job!), visiting top hotels and searching for the very best experiences for our tour.

Once the research was complete, we finalised the itinerary, built the website and quietly launched the first tour, unsure what the response would be. Within two weeks, the tour was half full. A month later, the tour was booked out. Our next tour will be a two-week Vegan Tour of New Zealand scheduled for February 2027 and, even though it’s still a year away, this tour is already half full.

As we prepare to welcome our first tour guests, it feels exciting to be building something that brings together great vegan food, beautiful places and people with a shared set of values. I’m looking forward to helping more vegans explore our part of the world and seeing where this journey leads.