Dubrovnik to Bled tour, Croatia and Slovenia

As a global tour operator, we’re committed to operating every one of our trips in a way that respects and benefits local people, their culture and economy, while minimising our impact on the natural environment.

We promote small group traveling where the maximum group size is 12. This has much less impact when exploring rural areas, reducing our environmental and social effects. Additionally, our small group sizes allow us to stay in family-run hotels and pensions throughout this trip, for example on the Croatian Islands, where we stay in the homes of local families, and in Bled, where we stay in a pension owned by a local family. We also support small restaurants and cafes, serving locally sourced produce.

By traveling in a group of 12 or less, we’re successfully attempting to tackle over tourism and allow us to explore without having an adverse effect on the nature of our destination. During this tour, we visit the Plitvice Lakes National Park which was awarded UNESCO World Heritage status 20 years ago. It’s an area spanning 19 hectares of wooded hills, encircling 16 turquoise lakes and connected by a network of waterfalls – it’s a very sensitive ecosystem that needs to be protected. The park is home to deer, bears, wolves, boars and over 120 species of birds, including hawks and eagles. On top of that you’ll also find thick, primeval forests of beech trees, fir spruces and white pines. Everyday lots of tourists walk along the paths to admire the beauty of nature, and in order to maintain this it’s important to follow the park’s rules. For example, you’re not allowed to swim in the lakes especially during summer. It’s always important to us that nature is treated with care and consideration. So, a series of wooden walkways have been built across the landscape to keep the impact as low as possible and our leaders are sure to stick to the signposted tracks.

When visiting fragile environments, remote areas and national parks, we operate a ‘take in, take back out’ system. Meaning our travelers gather any rubbish they create whilst hiking and to ensure no litter is left behind.

Choosing the right means of transport is another important decision for us to make sure that we travel sustainably. Even though it’s not always easy to access different places by public transport in Croatia, we use public bus (and even ferry!) as much as possible, for example from Dubrovnik to Korcula and from Split to Zadar we use public buses. And, from Korcula to Hvar and onto Split we use a public ferry instead of a small, private cruise ship just for our group. In this way, the burden on the environment is much lighter since considerably more people can travel on a ferry. Besides having a smaller impact on the environment, public transport gives our travelers a unique opportunity to get in touch with the locals and learn more about local life. In that way we travel like a local, with locals. The remaining parts of the trip are done by private transport, the operators of which are always sourced locally.

All our tour leaders are passionate about responsible travel, so the message is consistent at all times when it comes to environmental issues. In this part of Europe, the main issue is littering, and our leaders address this issue on the ground. This includes the ‘reduce, reuse and recycle’ philosophy. Even though Croatia has no recycling schemes in place, we educate our travelers on littering in general. On this trip, we also encourage travelers to bring their own bottles and refill them instead of buying plastic ones every time.