The accommodation used by us on Zanzibar, are all small-scale hotels which are important employers providing jobs for local people. All the food served in these hotels is bought locally, to help the surrounding communities benefit economically from tourists.
Shooting Star Inn train and employ people from the local community as guides and resort staff. The resort also helped to build a local school and clinic by providing them with building materials.
The historical 236 Hurumzi building was carefully restored to its former glory staying true to the traditional style and architecture of Stone Town. The hotel supports local AIDS / HIV organisations, provides AIDS awareness training to their staff, and distribute free condoms. The vast majority of their more than 40 regular and 20 or so casual staff are all from the local community. They support local dancers and musicians by providing them with an opportunity to perform and entertain guests with traditional music.
We organise spice tours and transfers for guests. These use local taxi drivers and tour guides and we request that you pay for these locally so that the money goes directly to the drivers/guides. We will always inform you of the cost of such additional expenses so you can be assured that you are paying a fair price without the need for bartering.
For all of our tours we provide customers with an itinerary specific responsible travel guide aprox 4 weeks before they depart. This includes a generic travelers code of conduct which emphasises basic responsible travel advice – e.g. reduction of waste and consumption of natural resources, purchase local produce where possible etc. Our vacations are specifically designed to bring guests into direct contact with locals from a range of different tribes and cultures across Africa. We also therefore provide destination specific guidance including advice on local customs and some key phrases in certain languages (e.g. Swahili). We also offer guidance on how to barter responsibly for local curios and what curios should be avoided (e.g. certain wildlife artefacts such as coral, turtle shells etc.). As all of our guides and groundhandlers are local we also give guidance on what a fair and reasonable level of tipping would be at the end of the vacation.
We support the work of Tourism Concern both in distributing their advice to customers and as an active participant in the Ethical Tour Operators Group. Our managing director sits on this group and is a regular attendee of meetings contributing to work towards developing industry wide fair trade standards. We also distribute materials to customers and make periodic donations for the following charities: Tree Aid; International Fund for Wildlife and Survival International Trust. In Southern Africa we support the Southern Africa Sustainable Seafood Initiative and forward their guidance to all customers on which seafood is sustainable when offered a choice at restaurants.
Whilst volunteering on a coral reef in Tanzania, the founder of this company fell in love with Africa. Using her academic background in environmental science, she decided to do something practical and help the continent develop a sustainable tourism portfolio. She developed vacations which combine the obvious itinerary highlights with more unusual experiences such as home stays and township visits. She believes that there are great benefits to travel: it is a chance to widen your horizons, learn about other people and see a bit more of the world than just that little place you call home.
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We invite every traveler who books a vacation via us to send in a review. Because we don't run the vacations they're completely independent and unedited... remember to read between the lines though, as two people on the same vacation can have different views!
