Whether you’re a consumer or an entrepreneur, if you’ve got anything more than a pinkie toe dipped into the world of online businesses, you probably marvel as much as we do at the pace of change in that space. It’s like an extra-super-megastore that rearranges the contents of its aisles every day, comes up with newfangled maps for figuring out what’s where, creates innovative ways of letting you rack up credit and just generally dazzles you with variety.

The problem with this scenario is a standard one: how do the Davids compete in Goliath-land? How do tight-pursed small and local shops nudge aside deep-pocketed multinationals? How does one chirping bird get heard above the thundering din of air sirens and foghorns?

One possible early action during the month of June is the Local Voices Rally and Tally for Local Travel Experts, a way to help some ethical local travel experts win some free online publicity and digital support for their businesses.

Collective Action
At The Travel Word, we believe that to cut through the noise – notably, in response to consumer demand that seems to be giving more and more credence to corner-store commerce – is through movements and campaigns that create assemblies of Davids or gather huge flocks of birds to help them sally forth as wholes far greater than the sums of their parts.

We’re sure you know of many such ventures, especially with regard to food, where the local and slow movements are growing stronger every day, following in the loamy footsteps of the powerful organic food lobby.

In travel too, we’ve seen a lot of promising collective action. As the culturally, environmentally and economically destructive reality of mindless and unethical travel (mass tourism, all-inclusive resort tourism, city-a-day package tourism) becomes more clear, new and mindful ways of engaging with the world – like ecotourism, sustainable travel, geotourism, local travel and slow travel – all seem to be gathering steam. And within each niche, beneficial work to rally active stakeholders behind common cause are making a difference.

Listen to Your Local Voices
The business of which The Travel Word is a part, WHL Group, is one such attempt to rally. Its claim to be the largest local-travel company in the world is by virtue of an extensive global network of hundreds of local travel professionals; it’s a Goliath of Davids.

But how do we parlay that self-supporting togetherness of local players into a global force? How does a bunch of small hands heft a mighty cudgel? How about through social media, services perfectly adapted to the needs of collectives?

With that in mind, we’ve just launched our Facebook-based Local Voices Rally and Tally for Local Travel Experts, an opportunity for one large assembly of ethical and responsible local-travel practitioners – purveyors of the kind of travel that promotes and supports the long-term sustainable protection of the unique qualities of a place – to give great and loud local voice to their causes.

The Rally and Tally
We know you’ve got your favourite travel destinations. Everyone does. We sure do (but we need to stay neutral, so we won’t tell)! Through the Local Voices Rally and Tally for Local Travel Experts, you can vote for your favourites AND help some ethical local travel experts from whl.travel win support for their businesses.

Think of it as helping your favourite destinations by improving access to them for the kinds of travellers you want to share it with – the responsible, mindful and fun ones. Those are the kinds of people our whl.travel local travel partners are there for too.

How can you help? It’s very, very easy! During the month of June, we’re asking the local experts to reach out to people far and wide for a small favour. You can do it too. It’s as simple as pasting some text and adding your name. In return, we’ve even decided to give away a whole bunch of services they really want.

All we need to do is work together to build a bigger, better and broader community of responsible travellers on Facebook. One bird chirping in the woods is very pretty, but it’s hard to hear and therefore easily overlooked. An enormous flock is loud and clear… and can’t be missed. Let’s flock!

This article originally appeared on The Travel Word blog