Carbon reduction

Your holiday will help support local people and conservation. We must also reduce CO₂. Learn about the CO₂ emissions of this holiday and how to reduce them.

Environment

Accommodation and Meals:
On this trip, we stay in Hotel Alfa Soleil, a traditional, cosy and family-run hotel that employs local staff and use local produce wherever possible. Additionally, anyone staying overnight in Switzerland is required to pay a local tourist tax which will be used to pay for tourist infrastructure. All of this thereby ensures that our money spent directly benefits the local community. Switzerland holds a mixture of language and tradition resulting in many regional dishes. Meals served are greatly influenced by Austrian and German traditions, where some gastronomic local delights include geschnetzeltes Kalbsfleisch (veal in a rich cream sauce), Kandersteger Bratwurst au Mad re-Jus (roast sausage with a Madeira sauce), Lammbraten gefüllt mit Kraütern (herb roasted lamb) and smoked pork with sauerkraut.

Activity:
As a walking and trekking trip, there is little detrimental impact on the environment and local residents. Though, erosion and adjacent to popular paths is a growing issue in certain places, our local guides will ensure that clients stick to advised routes in order to minimise this. On this trip, we only use local transport, specifically local buses and national rails. In addition, a walking trip like this allows easy access to the local community where clients can easily interact with the locals , visit local cafes and restaurants to foster cultural exchange.

Water:
Water is a really important issue with trips such as this and whilst we must stay hydrated, it is also vital that we have a system for providing clean water without causing lots of waste with plastic bottles. Wherever possible we provide safe alternative sources of water to buying single use plastic bottles. This may be through large water containers, or encourage our passengers to filter, sterilise or purify water. We encourage all our passengers to come prepared with a reusable water bottle for this purpose.

Group Size:
This is a small group tour, meaning that we have a low impact on the environments and communities we visit and are able to ensure that we do not disrupt or lead to the displacement of local people. The small number also allows us to stay in unique, family-run hotels that cannot benefit from coach tours and other mass tourism due to their limited sizes.

UK Office:
It all starts at home where we work towards reducing our carbon footprint in our offices through energy conservation measures, recycling policies and the promotion of cycling and walking as a means for our staff to commute. Our head office has become a plastic-free zone with the use of plastic bottles being banned in our head office and we distributed reusable water bottles and tote bags to every staff member. We also support a large number of community and environmental projects in different parts of the world and try to give something back to the places we visit.