Family diving holiday in the Red Sea

The Dive Centre is an Egyptian owned small scale hotel and diving centre on the south side of Dahab’s sea front. As a locally owned hotel the staff, from cooks to dive guides, are drawn from the local Egyptian community. All staff are fully trained in their specialist areas and many have been able to move onto other areas of the Egyptian tourism industry as a consequence of the training they have received at Inmo.

The Centre has purchased the building opposite the hotel and developed it into a school with the money generated from tourist revenues. Initially the aim was to offer schooling to the children of staff employed at Inmo but the school has been so successful and grown to such a size that it can now provide primary school facilities for local children across the village of Dahab. The revenues generated by tourists staying at Inmo help to sustain the school and have paid for experienced teachers to reside at the school for extended periods. In particular high quality language training given to Egyptian staff has enabled them to cater for all of the European market and PADI dive courses can be delivered in several major European languages by Egyptian staff.

For all of our tours we provide customers with an itinerary specific responsible travel guide aprox 4 weeks before they depart. This includes a generic travellers code of conduct which emphasises basic responsible travel advice – e.g. reduction of waste and consumption of natural resources, purchase local produce where possible etc. Our holidays are specifically designed to bring guests into direct contact with locals from a range of different tribes and cultures across Africa. We also therefore provide destination specific guidance including advice on local customs and some key phrases in certain languages (e.g. Swahili). We also offer guidance on how to barter responsibly for local curios and what curios should be avoided (e.g. certain wildlife artefacts such as coral, turtle shells etc.). As all of our guides and groundhandlers are local we also give guidance on what a fair and reasonable level of tipping would be at the end of the holiday.

We support the work of Tourism Concern both in distributing their advice to customers and as an active participant in the Ethical Tour Operators Group. Our managing director sits on this group and is a regular attendee of meetings contributing to work towards developing industry wide fair trade standards. We also distribute materials to customers and make periodic donations for the following charities: Tree Aid; International Fund for Wildlife and Survival International Trust. In Southern Africa we support the Southern Africa Sustainable Seafood Initiative and forward their guidance to all customers on which seafood is sustainable when offered a choice at restaurants.