Tel. +44 (0)1273 600030 (UK)
All of our tour leaders are trained in accordance with responsible travel policies and will brief our groups about this issue at the start of the tour. We stay in smaller locally owned and operated hotels and avoid the large multi-national chains which grossly over-consume local resources such as water and electricity. Our Nile boat is locally owned and much smaller than most others on the river; this means it creates much less water disturbance and causes less erosion to the farming land along the banks. You will be on traditional transportation for much of the tour (including camels, donkeys and trains) which helps to reduce the carbon emissions from your journey.
At the Red Sea coast we work with environmentally certified dive schools (members of HEPCA organisation). Our tour leaders are very pro-active and will advise travellers on how best to minimise their impact on the Red Sea and prevent damage to the coral. As a company we are commited to travel with responsibility and we actively support two local projects in Eqypt - one a children's home in Luxor and the other a heritage exhibition preserving knowledge and history of the Qurnawi community - as well as many other projects around the world.
For the Qurna Discovery project we pay £2,500 per year which covers their rent and allows the exhibition to be visited free of charge by all visitors - local and foreign thereby ensuring maximum publicity with locals as well who probably would not pay to go to see it.
With the Sunshine project in January we collected £25 from our clients - the level varies every month of course depending on what our clients choose to donate. We match this £ for £ (therefore in January it became £50 to the charity) Based on this average there would be about £600 per year donated plus whatever is donated through collection boxes placed in the hotels we use/local donation etc. Many tour leaders take members of their tour to visit the home and the children although this of course depends on circumstances at the time both for the tour and the activities scheduled at the home.
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!
