Corfu swimming vacation in Greece

Planet

CARBON REDUCTION
We have designed our trip operations carefully to minimize our impact on our environment. By its very nature, exploring the world via swimming – “human powered”, means our guests are not using unnecessary motorized vehicles to enjoy their vacation destination. We try to keep our transfer times as short as possible, ensuring guests spend less time traveling and more time swimming on their swim vacation. All our trips are sold without flights so travelers have the option to use more environmentally friendly means of travel if they wish.
Guests use shared local transport to travel from Corfu to Mathraki by taxi and boat and we share all guest arrival times so that collective lifts can be arranged.
Vegetarian & Vegan food is available daily from both our hotel and the local restaurants that we choose to visit in the evenings. The hotel uses fresh local ingredients from the local fishermen and farms to create delicious Greek meals with plenty of olives from the groves on the island.

ENVIRONMENT & WILDLIFE
Mathraki, by its remote location, offers a lush, green natural environment. There are no taxi’s, cars or bikes available to hire on the island and hardly any vehicles on the island so tourists are encouraged to move around on foot to discover the wonderful bays and coves. This helps to protect the local environment and wildlife including the indigenous game and migrating birds.

We continue to be reminded of the problem of plastic in our oceans. As such, we are committed to helping reduce to amount of plastic we use on our trips. We do this by:
• Encouraging guests to bring their own reusable water bottle on tour, or purchasing one of our non-plastic reusable alternatives
• Running regular guide plastic clean up sessions in our locations
• Using locally grown produce and home-cooked food wherever available to reduce the amount of plastic food packaging bought

People

LOCAL ECONOMY
Our local hosts- Giorgos, Giannis and Nora - work closely alongside our guides to deliver an unforgettable vacation experience for our guests. Our local partners provide an invaluable wealth of local knowledge, not only on the safety front, but also by enhancing our guest’s cultural experiences – from food, to customs and hidden-away local gems. Through years of building happy, positive relationships with our local partners, we are confident in the knowledge that our guests will receive a wonderful warm welcome.
The hotel we use in Mathraki is family owned and run and there are currently three generations living there who have spent many years creating a paradise of cultural tourism.
As most of our locations are small and remote, we make sure that our itineraries ‘spread the happiness’ meaning we take the guests to visit different businesses within the community. For example, we arrange for evening meals to be hosted at a local restaurants each night, ensuring that the economic benefits brought about by our operation are distributed in an equitable way on the island.

EMPLOYMENT, INCLUSIVITY AND DIVERSITY
The Argyros family own and run the hotel which provides employment opportunities for local people on Mathraki Island. Greece. We use a small, local taxi company on Corfu to transfer our guests to the harbour and use all locally owned restaurants which help sustain employment in the area.
All our trips are inclusive and everyone is welcome to join us as long as we can make suitable arrangements for any individual needs. The trip is LGBTQ+ friendly and we are happy to discuss individual needs relating to mobility, vision, hearing or cognitive issues and as long as we can put in place measures to ensure the trip remains safe for all guest, we welcome everyone.