Zakynthos holiday accommodation, Greece

The owner Dionisis Giannoulis is an elected member of the local community council and is involved with all the things that happen in the community. It is our policy to support UNICEF and WWF by always using their cards for example Christmas greetings and other reasons when we communicate with our guests. We are also adopting an animal every year for the WWF.

As we are in the area of the Zakynthian National Marine Park which protects not only the Loggerhead Sea turtle Caretta Caretta but also the seals and all other water life as well as grounds and fauna in the area we provide our guests with information, leaflets, maps about the environment. There is also the ARCHELON, the sea turtle protection society which works in this area of the island and which we encourage our guests to visit. Their main information camp is at Geraks beach, 1,5 km from us. We encourage our guests to support them giving them information and leaflets and information about their exhibitions and slide shows they arrange in the area. We also inform our guests on how to use the turtlenesting beaches in a nature friendly way.

The complete picture: Dionisis grow up on this small family farm with his brother and sister, his father being from this village (Vassilikos) and his mother from another village on the island. Fishing, his father has small fishing boat, and farming has been their income. They grow their own vegetables and fruits in the same way as Dionisis parents always have done. With just a few animals, one cow, one or two pigs, a few goats and sheep, rabbits and chickens.

They are a family which never lost the connection with the traditional way of farming, it was always natural to them to separate different kinds of garbage, their animals always could eat some of it, some could be reused by themselves and only a little was actually thrown away. Dionisis is educated a plumber but still goes out fishing with his father, and he has also expanded the farming a bit by learning more about new ways of organic farming and developed their old vineyards and beehives. He has also planted a wider range of fruit trees so every season there is always at least one kind of fruit always to pick from the trees!

The organic farming today includes wine, oil, honey (10 beehives), potatoes, tomatoes, cucumber, green salad, ruccola, aubergines, squash, beans, corn (maize), apricots, orange, mespoles, peach, mandarin, lemons, cherries, pomme granade, kidonia, figs. All the above are grown according to the season. As we have our own restaurant as well where we use the produce from our garden naturally we encourage our guests to stay and eat with us and also tell them about the local minimarkets and other shops and restaurants. We also have a local ceramics workshop only 700 metres away.

We inform our guests how to make the cool temperature from the night stay in the house during the day to minimize use of a/c, they are always turned off if there is nobody in the house. We are lucky that the little hill we are on always bring a fresh breeze and the houses are all of stone and isolated roofs so if you keep the windows open to the north and the shutters closed during the day you don’t have to use the a/c at all. We do inform our guests to turn off all the lights when they are not using them. We have 3 natural wells and one water cistern of 10M3 that collects rainwater. There are showers in all the accommodations (in some there is a tub with a shower as well), and all are half flush toilets. Every second day there is a choice to change linen, we do encourage our guests to put in the laundry only what they really need to be washed.

We use organic rubbish plastic bags and eco washing powder. We do use natural fertilisers such as animal manure and natural compost. The one well is open and so keeps frogs and snakes and lizards, which attracts owls and other wild birds. We do keep old trees with holes in them (we have some very old kermes oaks on the grounds, as well as poplars) to encourage wild birds to nest. We have areas especially close to the beehives that are left wild. And also in many other places as the grounds are large and include both farmed land, bush and a bit of pineforest. We have 2 compost boxes of 900 litres each. We do feed food waste to our animals, to chicken, pigs, rabbits, goat, sheep. We use compost in the farming of vegetables and flowers.

We recycle plastic, paper, metal, aluminium and glass. It is locally collected from the community. We do recycle guests waste and encourage guests to separate waste for recycling. We use the printer very seldom, all our office job is done by computer, information is sent by e-mail. Our office is in our home so we don’t have to drive there.

Mrs Filio is a Greek woman from the house next to ours she is the cleaning assistant and has worked with us for many years. She has 2 children and 4 grandchildren. She does not speak English. In the tavern we are 4 people from our family working and a chef from Patras town and a waiter from the village. Dimitra, the chef, loves her job and has really put our tavern on the map making delicious Zakynthian traditional food but also inspiring dishes from other parts of Greece.

The maybe most interesting persons in this family business are grandma and grandpa, to hear their stories about how it was to grow up on this island before electricity and cars had arrived, the memories of the war, the earthquake in 1953 and their hard work of making a living make them real heroes. Always with humor and a smile on their faces reflect a philosophy of where love is the main ingredient. We buy Zakynthian Oilcheese (in old times grandmother made it but now we buy it from our neighbours) Meat and fish we have from our own animals and fishing, that is for our own needs and we always buy Greek meat and fish from local produce. The bread we make ourselves in wood fired ovens outside.

This is an island and we all depend on each other so naturally we use as much as we can from our neighbouring workers and specialists. Dionisis himself is a farmer, fisherman and plumber, but also a stone-builder as he has built the restaurant with his own hands. Dionisis and Fotini are patient people, time is not a problem to them, but they never stop looking out for new ways of doing things in a better more sufficient way.