Winner at Booking Booster

In 2019, SASANE Sisterhood was chosen as one of just ten startups worldwide to join Booking.com's Booster programme — a global accelerator for travel businesses driving positive social and environmental change. For a survivor-led operator from Nepal, the selection was a turning point: recognition that a company built and run by women who survived human trafficking could scale, compete and inspire on the international stage.

The Booster programme exists to find and grow the travel ideas most capable of changing the industry, and SASANE's model fit precisely. Every one of its guides is a survivor of human trafficking. The treks and tours they lead run through Nepal's lesser-travelled mountain regions, where visitors share home-cooked meals and learn traditional skills — basket weaving, brewing and more — directly from local artisans. The experience is intimate, rooted in community, and impossible to replicate on a conventional package tour.

What sets a women-empowerment travel operator apart is the impact woven into each booking. As the programme highlighted, travellers who choose SASANE's experiences actively contribute to the elimination of trafficking, gender-based violence and child marriage in these rural communities. The income earned by guides and host families creates exactly the kind of economic security that protects women from exploitation in the first place — turning tourism from a transaction into a safeguard.

The Booster recognition mattered for reasons beyond prestige. Grassroots social enterprises in countries like Nepal rarely gain access to the mentoring, networks and visibility that growth requires. By joining a cohort of the world's most promising responsible-travel startups, SASANE gained the tools to professionalise and expand its work, reaching more international travellers and, in turn, bringing more women into the work at home.

It also signalled something important to the wider market: that ethical travel and excellent travel are not at odds. SASANE's guides pass the same examinations and meet the same standards as any professional guide in Nepal; the difference is who they are and what their work makes possible. Booking.com's selection affirmed that survivors, leading as professional guides, deliver experiences travellers genuinely want.

Years on, the Booster award remains a defining chapter in SASANE's story — evidence that a women-led travel operator from the Himalayas earned its place among global pioneers of sustainable tourism. For travellers seeking a journey through Nepal that means something, it is a reminder that the most memorable adventures are often the ones that change lives, including the lives of the women who guide the way.