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Family holiday to Iceland

COUNTRY:
Iceland
DEPARTURES:
2012: 3 Jun, 22 Jul, 5 Aug, 26 Aug
PRICE:
From £1349 - £1369 (8 days) including UK flights
MORE INFO:
From £1095 - £1115 per child. From £1059 - £1079 excluding flights.
VOUCHERS:
Gift vouchers can be used with this holiday
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Family holiday to Iceland

Family holiday to Iceland

Small group family holiday
This is a 'small group family adventure' - typically you will join several other families and travel in a group of approx. 16 people. The trips are great value and a great way for you and your children to meet new people! While itineraries are pre-planned there is some flexibility and you'll have plenty of time to yourselves. Most adventure kids tend to be aged between 7 and 15, but some are younger (minimum age is usually 5) and some older (perhaps travelling as part of a larger family group). Please check with the operator to confirm the minimum age for this trip

How this holiday makes a difference

On all our tours we try to minimise our impact on the landscape and places we visit, especially important amongst such extraordinary scenery as in Iceland.

The Icelandic people are justifiably proud of their pure, natural environment and clean air so we always take our litter away with us, use only locally owned transport, and walk wherever possible. Use of locally owned services extends to accommodation and food, a double benefit as we get to sample lots of delicious freshly caught seafood.

Activities include a visit to a traditional Icelandic horse farm, where riding is available helping support the continuation of traditional, family run horse breeding. We also contribute to the economy when paying to visit national parks, such as Snaefellsnes, part of Green Globe 21, a worldwide benchmarking program to encourage sustainable travel and tourism.

Our Tour Leaders are all trained by us in the importance of responsible tourism with guidance given on how they can make a difference. This then percolates down through those they deal with.

As well as the above, we support a variety of charities and projects worldwide which support vulnerable communities and habitats including Friends of Conservation, Hope Worldwide and Send A Cow. We are also actively engaged with UK travel industry bodies which promote best practice in responsible tourism, such as Tourism Concern, The Travel Foundation and AITO. Our commitment to responsible tourism is not limited to our overseas operation and we have measures to ensure our UK office operates according to our responsible tourism policy. Carbon offsets for all flights booked with us are included in the tour cost.

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Story of the holiday provider

This small group operator is just celebrating its 30th year and was originally set up to enrich people’s lives through adventure travel. They find the family travel experience is very popular and groups gel together quickly. Taking your children to local communities creates an instant fascination and can be a natural ice-breaker. Family adventure holidays can offer an opportunity to learn about other lifestyles and break down barriers. There is great advantage to spending time together, doing things you would never normally consider, as opposed to taking a package holiday where your children are separated and sent off to their own area.

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Holiday provider no: 276

Family holiday to Iceland

Family holiday to Iceland

Reviewed 27 Aug 2006 by Maria Tate4 star rating

Iceland is an amazing place and the tour around the south west of the island takes in many spectacular sights - from geysers to glaciers. For anyone with even a passing interest in geography, this tour is a dream come true. The activites were geat fun and the various stops were fascinating.

However, the time allowed to move from one site to the next is often inadequate. In particular, the day spent moving from the first "hotel" to the second involves a very long journey, which doesn't leave much time at the stops en-route (a great pity as they include the geysers and some awsome waterfalls).

On the tour we took, the company used a campsite, with accommodation in chalets and a central shower block and "restaurant"; an aparthotel, with adjoining restaurant; and a business hotel, under process of renovation and 45 minutes outside Reyjavik, as their "hotels". None of these had anything wrong with them in themselves - food at the campsite was basic but plentiful, the restaurant at the aparthotel was very good and the hotel in Haftnarfjordir was very well appointed indeed. However, they were not what we'd expected from the brochure or the intinerary descriptions. Icelandic prices are extremely high and I can well believe that the company have to take cheaper places wherever they can find them or the tour price would be so high it wouldn't sell. However, customers should be aware that the designations of "hotel", "guesthouse" etc are grossly misleading.

I must stress that the company did use local amenities well and that the excursions they arranged were with extremely competent local providers. Since they cannot sell their agricultural produce on the world market (prices too high), Iceland will depend more and more on tourism (especially as fishing becomes more regulated). This company use smaller outlets for accomodation which I probably wouldn't have found for myself.

I would advise people travelling to Iceland to be ready for higher than the highest London prices and that most places take credit cards (something else the company didn't make clear - there's really no need to take travellers cheques as they suggest).

All in all, a very enjoyable holiday - lots of stories to tell and, yes, we'd recommend it to others.

Read the operator's response here:

We note Ms Tate's comments regarding the hotels on her trip. Given the variety of accommodation we use at many of our nightstops, our classification must be a rudimentary one and is not intended to give a specific indication of the facilities that will be available at each hotel. In this respect, H suggests that the hotel will usually have twin bedded rooms, although some three or four bedded rooms may be used, and will normally have shared facilities. The hotel will have a local grading of 1, 2, or 3 star.

In our brochure, we state that our aim is to stay at small, locally owned establishments, not only to allow greater contact and insight into the areas being visited, but also to try and be of greater assistance to the local economy, which will often see little financial reward from tourists who stay in the larger, internationally owned hotels.

For the majority of customers, this has proved to be a highlight of the tour. We do try and prepare our customers for the basic conditions by highlighting this fact in our trip dossier ("We stay in generally simple twin rooms with shared facilities...occassionally...dorm style rooms will be used") and would again hope that this would be something that customers would bear in mind when deciding on their preferred choice of trip.
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Holiday Reviews

We invite every traveller who books a holiday via us to send in a review. Because we don't run the holidays they're completely independent and unedited... remember to read between the lines though, as two people on the same holiday can have different views!

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Family holiday to Iceland
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