Georgia painting holiday

Planet

To reduce the amount of driving we use a hub-and-spoke approach. Guests stay in fewer lodging locations that become their 'base' as we run many day trips that are all close by to the base. This means less driving, less emissions and more time everyday spent with local businesses and not sitting in cars. Being in one place for longer than a day helps our guests get to know the regional communities better.

In 2020, we will give all guests, free of charge, re-usable water bottles to help with the major problem that is plastic. We hope it can reduce unnecessary plastic bottles that are ubiquitous on all tours by 6-10 bottles per person on a normal tour of ours.

All of our invoices, travel information and travel documents to our clients are issued as PDF - not printed on paper. The majority of our brochures are disseminated via PDF downloads and emails rather than printed on paper.

In our office we operate mainly with computers. We use emails rather than fax and do print documents but store them on our computers and in online clouds.

People

We offer our travelers small family-owned hotels and B&B's to stay in. Overnight in these locally owned lodgings enhances the visitors’ experience, since they get an opportunity to be welcomed by a local host and receive a better insight into the everyday life of local people. It also puts guests in touch with people they would normally not come across while traveling in large cities or without knowing the local roads. We communicate directly to these suppliers so there is no middle man who would get most of the money. Instead, the majority of money generated on our tours goes into the pockets of small wineries, shops, farmhouses and other locally operated businesses.

All of the meals included in our tours are at locally owned and operated restaurants, farmhouses and pensions. In this way our clients have an opportunity to taste some of the typical specialties of the region and at the same time help the local economy. Most of the food served at these places are from the owner's land, though a few items are supplemented from other local farmers and food producers in the region.

Over 95% of the money generated from this tour stays in the local economy.