The guest rooms are elegantly decorated with Moroccan crafts, with candles or lanterns for lighting and a gas stove for heat. There’s no front desk, no set check-in and no television, and there are no room keys.

Instead of a restaurant, the staff deliver custom meals in surprise locations any time you wish. Most of them are village residents who can also teach you to make traditional tafarnout bread or weave Berber baskets.

All this is emblematic of Teyssier’s avant-garde style, which he has refined in the 22 years since he opened Dar Ahlam, in Ouarzazate, Morocco.

Through his company 700,000 Heures (700,000 hours is the length of an average human life), he has earned a devoted fan base that follows him to each new location, be it in Cambodia or Brazil.

Until recently the premise was straightforward: 700,000 Heures would pop up somewhere for six months – its second outing was in Siem Reap, Cambodia – then close shop and create magic elsewhere. But in 2022, Teyssier decided to switch gears.

He renamed the company 700,000 Heures Impact and gave it a new mission: to create permanent resorts rather than ephemeral camps as a way to kick-start micro-tourism economies in rural but culturally rich communities.

Before Tizkmoudine, he says, “I was focused on hospitality. But hospitality shouldn’t be the goal, it should be a tool for communities to become independent.” Now, he says, “the impact is more important than the stay”.

The tourism industry, Teyssier says, has for too long prioritised service to guests rather than community empowerment. But a single resort, he argues, can do much more than surprise and delight travellers while creating resort jobs.

It can jump-start small enterprises, restore the local environment and preserve culture for future generations wherever it operates.

There, chocolate-making classes will use pods from a revived cacao plantation, and forest treks will double as conservation missions, with guests and environmentalists placing wildlife-tracking cameras along the way.

All its activities will be conceived and led by local residents based on what they think visitors should learn about. Five per cent of lodging revenue and 10 per cent of the net profit from the hotel’s all-inclusive rates will fund the creation of these types of locally owned enterprises, as well as others that will not be connected to tourism.

Even the pricing structure is meant to be disruptive: While rooms at any 700,000 Heures Impact hotel will cost from US$1,000 to US$2,000 per night, guests are required to donate to a specific community fund before gaining access to the reservations portal.

Give too little, and you may hear that the trip is “sold out”. (Teyssier recommends donations around US$1,000.)

It is a test of your mindset, he explains. The question is: how much are you willing to give to a place before taking anything from it?

What Teyssier is building with 700,000 Heures Impact may be the North Star of “regenerative travel”, which leverages tourism to safeguard ecosystems and traditions so they can be perpetuated for future generations.

The term has become more widely adopted since Covid-19 pandemic closures brought to light how destructive tourism can be; as with some previous sustainability oriented trends, however, it is dominated by empty claims.

“Regenerative tourism says that it is not enough to just simply sustain the ecosystems and the communities,” says Bobbie Chew Bigby, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Waterloo in Canada who is based in the US state of Oklahoma and focuses on tourism as a tool for indigenous communities like her own Cherokee Nation.

“We have to push further than sustainable.”

But regenerative tourism follows an entirely different business model than traditional hotel development.

It does not fit into urban centres as neatly as it does rural communities, and expanding these systems requires the buy-in of government partners, non-profit groups and community leaders.

Even identifying the right destinations is a challenge: it is just about where you think travellers want to go, but also where they are wanted.

There’s a sort of serendipity to how Teyssier identifies new projects.

Leads often come to him via a vast network of contacts who work around the world in non-profit organisations and development. Every project is unique, and even the most successful ones have to be kept small so they do not encroach on local resources.

And although they are profitable enterprises given the price point, they are built to make money for the community – not shareholders.

“What we want is to create autonomy and not dependency on hospitality,” says Diane Binder, an international development expert who advises Teyssier and is his business partner on 700,000 Heures Impact.

She has previously worked on environmental projects in more than 15 African countries.

If 700,000 Heures Impact projects are meant to prop up a whole local economy, they have to consider everything: carbon footprint, energy usage, long-term employment prospects, even the local government’s provision of healthcare and social security.

Gauging the success of these regenerative hospitality projects is another major challenge: “Even though it's a big buzzword right now, I don’t know that really consistent metrics have been identified,” Bigby says.

For 700,000 Heures Impact, Binder has developed customised performance indicators for each project, including climate impact, biodiversity and the population’s quality of life. Another metric – financial effectiveness – calculates a project’s profitability over three to five years.

“There are some intangible indicators that are as important, such as a renewed sense of dignity,” says Binder. Questionnaires are used to get those answers.

In less than two years, she adds, Tizkmoudine has created jobs for more than 200 residents who are now directly involved in 15 new co-operatives, of whom more than two-thirds are women.

These include a wood factory, a hospitality-services cooperative offering tours and a children’s activity group.

Thirty five co-op leaders have also been registered for access to social security, indicating improved quality of life. And young people are coming back to the village, Binder says.

It used to be impossible to get a job in Tizkmoudine, but now they are drawn to new opportunities for income.

So far, 700,000 Heures Impact has not published any impact reports or audits, which would help would-be donors and travellers understand how much it costs to operate the hotels and how much is allocated to community projects.

It also declined to answer questions about whether it would do so in the future.

Bigby, the research fellow and regenerative travel expert, would usually consider this a red flag.

Her best advice to travellers looking for regenerative options is to parse impact reports, annual reports, information on websites or 990 forms (in the case of US non-profit organisations) to understand how funding is allocated and whether locals are sitting on the board of the company itself.

It will take a committed traveller to arrive at the 700,000 Heures Impact location in Peru. To get there, guests will fly from Lima to Tarapoto Airport, in the north, then drive 45 minutes through cloud forests and Amazon jungle.

But when they arrive, they will find 100 hectares (247 acres) of wilderness, with thatch-roofed bamboo structures that are open to the elements. The whole thing could easily have been pulled straight out of Bali.

Stays here will help fund a number of newly created co-operatives to employ locals and preserve the surrounding land, whose biodiversity will generate long-term income for Peruvian entrepreneurs, including a factory producing recyclable paper from forest plants.

And, also important, they will be fun for visitors, too: they can spend their days hiking, canoeing, birdwatching or swimming in waterfalls. (Rooms will be bookable until September, when the rainy season begins; then the hotel will close until next May. The cooperative projects are intended to stay open all year.)

In October, a third destination will open in Mexico, in Pueblo del Sol, south of the city of Oaxaca. There, regenerative projects will focus on the production of coffee, vanilla, agave and pottery, all of which lend themselves to workshops and special experiences.

“It is always about how to support a local economy,” Binder says.

Teyssier recognises regenerative hospitality has become a trendy concept that is prone to be viewed with scepticism. But he chooses to see the buzz in a positive light. If others replicate his company’s model, all the better.

Future locations for 700,000 Heures Impact include Rwanda, Oman and Mongolia, with plans to open two projects a year.