Galapagos family vacation, hotel based

Planet

The Galapagos was the first natural site to be named a UNESCO World Heritage Site - 1979.

It is also a Biosphere Reserve and Whale Sanctuary. The Galapagos is a worldwide model for eco-tourism. Here you are able to visit an area of great natural beauty and encounter, at close quarters, animal species that have no fear of humans. Strict regulations govern all tourist activities and are rigidly enforced and tourist numbers are restricted.

For every visitor we take on our Galapagos cruises we donate £25 to the Galapagos Conservation Trust (www.gct.org) who work to protect and conserve the Galapagos islands, or choose to take up a free one year membership of the Trust, paid for by us.

The boats we use are all locally owned and operated yachts or ferries.

The Galapagos Islands are a very fragile environment and the arrival of more and more inhabitants to the islands, as well as tourist have an impact. Please try to minimise your impact:

Take a water bottle to refill, rather than use a new bottle each time;
recycling your rubbish where possible, not leaving any behind;
Taking batteries back home with you – they cannot be recycled properly in Ecuador;
saving water where possible; and
saving energy by switching your lights off when you leave the room. Electricity on the islands comes from a generator, fuelled by petrol. For the same reason, please think about whether you really need to use your air conditioning.

People

Our hotel-based trips bring vital income to the local Galapaqueños in many forms.

The guides are all Galapaqueños, and live and work on the island, bringing tourist money into the islands and helping to sustain families there. Because all guides have to be Galapaqueños, this encourages locals to train as guides and learn new skills.

We use locally-owned hotels, ensuring tourist-generated cash stays on the islands. Breakfasts provided are all sourced from the islands' shops or fantastic natural resources - fish, fruit, coffee etc, all harvested locally where possible. The circular cash flow means that every penny spent on the islands can stay there and help to redistribute the money that comes to the islands via tourism.

We encourage people to use local restaurants as not all meals are included, and this stimulates the local economy too, providing jobs and salaries for locals.

Indirectly, through our support of the Galapagos Conservation Trust, we help to support Community Projects. For everyone that travels to the Galapagos Islands with us, we donate to the Trust.

Recent projects include restoring populations of critically endangered species, monitoring fish stocks, researching the impact of building new homes and discussing possible future water shortages - and all of these involve every local community on the Galapagos.