Kenya family holiday

Environment

A family holiday in Kenya will usually include a number of different game drives whilst on safari in various different national parks. All of our holidays are organised in conjunction with a local (Kenyan owned) tour operator which shares our committment to Responsible Travel. This is reflected in the nature of the guides who accompany our game drives as they take particular care to ensure that the safaris are conducted in a responsible manner. This includes providing advice to travellers about how to behave whilst on safari (for example not wearing bright colours) and also an explanation of the ecosystem in Kenya and the way that the different animals live. We find that children become fascinated in the environment and the guides enjoy teaching them about its preservation and the difficulties being faced, for example by poaching. We feel that this educational element is a core part of our trips.
Our UK office is run as environmentally as possible. The majority of our staff either walk or cycle to work and we operate a primarily paper free environment. We do not produce brochures (which often leads to a lot of waste) but market our tours exclusively on the internet.

Community

There has unfortunately been a degree of exploitation of indigenous peoples in Africa from tourism, particularly some of the Masai people living around the Masai Mara. Villages have turned in to little more than glorified photo opportunities for camera wielding tourists. That said, we do think that introducing travellers to the Masai way of life is an important aspect of any trip to Kenya and it is something that families particularly enjoy. We have therefore taken steps to try to arrange visits to as authentic and genuine a village as possible, without the degree of exploitation seen in some places.
Many of our families also enjoy visiting a local school so we try to include this where possible. Children always really enjoy this and parents are very pleased to offer their children a detailed insight into a rather different way of life!
The lodges that we use in Kenya are small and usually family owned. They generally employ a large percentage of staff from the local community.