Turkey small group holiday

The very ethos of our style of travel is responsible; small groups on fully escorted tours, experiencing the very best of a region, a culture and a landscape, with a friendly local hand guiding the way. Our itineraries are designed to give our travellers real life experiences without compromising the part of the world we are exploring; to travel responsibly is at the heart of our commitment as a global tour operator.

Travel with us on this wonderful journey encompassing both modern and ancient Turkey and you can be sure that as well as a fascinating trip staying in comfortable hotels, you will be on a tour that will tread lightly, support local industry and initiative and help provide regional employment opportunities en route. Through our policy on employing professional, local leaders to guide our groups, you will also benefit from a greater personal understanding of the ancient and sometimes turbulent history, culture and traditions of this unique country which sits astride two confinements.

We ask all our travellers to be aware of cultural sensitivities when they travel with us and your group leader will also be able to encourage and advise your group with this. Actions in tune with the area being visited are often a key indicator marking out responsible travellers from many of the ‘tourist herd’. Some areas visited in this trip are very conservative in their attitudes, particularly outside of the Cappadocia region, where we stop for the night in Konya. Attitudes here are very religious and conservative so we ask that modest clothing that covers shoulders and longer trousers as an alternative to shorts are worn.

The comfortable accommodations that we use throughout this trip are all private, locally owned properties reflective of the region we are through which we are travelling. All are fantastically placed to give you a range of dining options at a variety of traditional (often family run) establishments, further supporting local businesses and allowing you to discover the region through some great food! Make use of your guides’ local knowledge to dine where the locals do, or feel free to explore and discover independently, it’s entirely up to you. Either way, you’ll be benefiting the local economy.

This trip takes in a number of major archaeological sites from Goreme, to Ephesus, to Troy, where you may have a local site guide with your group as well as your group leader. The entrance fee to all sites goes towards the continued upkeep of these very special slices of history, but the part we play in bigger than that. We ask all our travellers to respect the sites we are visiting. At many of these locations the group will enjoy a picnic lunch, made up of locally sourced, fresh produce. We do however want these beautiful locations maintained for future visitors, so your group leader will always be on hand to assist in the responsible disposal of rubbish. We aim to recycle wherever possible, and the group leader will encourage the group to take rubbish with us until it can be discarded appropriately.

We know that small steps can make a big difference to the overall picture and you will hopefully notice other little actions taken as we go, such as the fact that we encourage travellers to use refillable water bottles and purification tablets rather than purchasing water in plastic bottles on tour, thus helping to minimise waste.

To further reduce our environmental impact on tour, we operate on a carbon neutral basis, not only offering all passengers the option of offsetting their international flights with us, but also offsetting all ‘on the ground’ passenger carbon emissions on every trip. On this Turkey Encompassed itinerary this equates to 506kg of carbon offset per person, per departure.