marketing angles to sell the same old tours in new packaging. But nothing about ecotourism or responsible travel, or its values, requires a tour, and even the best tours have several strikes against them, as I've tried to explain.
Independent travelers, of course, run the gamut too. It's all too easy to fall into a rut of going from one place listed in a guidebook for foreigners, or recommended by other foreigners, to another; to stay and eat only in places catering to, and patronized exclusively by, other foreigners like you; to spend most of your time in ghettoes of foreigners; to socialize mostly with other foreigners; and to interact with local people only as service providers. Some people argue that, to the extent that they succeed in getting "off the beaten path" or into newly touristed areas, independent backpackers are the vanguard of cultural imperialism and the destructive effects of mass tourism.
But I would argue strongly against letting yourself be talked into an "ecotour" as necessarily being a "more ecological" or "more responsible" way to travel than traveling on your own. (For both sides of this debate, see the "Backpackers" and "Guidebooks" special issues of Tourism Concerns's journal, Tourism In Focus.) To me, the key thing is that if you make your own arrangements, you have to take personal responsibility for the ecological implications (physical and cultural) of the way you travel. Traveling independently means not having a tour operator to rely on for ecological awareness or decision-making. It's past time, however -- at least in my opinion -- for independent travel to be recognized as offering more diverse possibilities for ecotourism, and greater opportunity for responsible tourism, than any tour.