Sustainability
Well before many were discussing sustainability in travel, we were putting it into place in your travel plans. And your trips have always been so much richer for it.
In an increasingly globalized society — one where wearying sameness produces irreparable cultural damage — we will, again and again, offer you experiences that are wondrously diverse from what you will find at home. And we will make sustainability a priority.
For 35 years, we’ve encouraged travel off the beaten track, out of high season, and have been especially protective of the fragile destinations that we include on your itineraries. We encouraged walking, trains and boats and bicycles when other travel planning companies have their clients in rental cars and in diesel-burning vans with drivers. We always urge spending more time in one place and exploring it meaningfully, giving more time to establishing a considered feel for each destination.
When you visit heralded locations like Venice or Florence, we organize off peak hours sightseeing, guide you to lesser trodden attractions and always include the option of environmentally themed specialized tours, for example Venetian ecosystems. We love the places you are visiting, and do all we can to help you visit with a light foot.
In the hotels we select for you, we chose nearly always smaller establishments of high standard, principally family run, and most with a commitment to environmental stewardship. Many have organic gardens, or solar panels, or a no plastic policy.
We introduce you to gifted artisans whose survival depends on patronage from those who know about them. Instead of directing your spending power towards touristy chains that have a negative effect on a city, we help you to invest in the health of small enterprises and the living fabric of the place.
We connect you with Italians who teach you their handcraft : weaving, leather-making, silk making, sculpting, painting, mosaics and much more. We guide you into the workshops and homes of small artisanal food producers eager to show you how traditional foods have been made for centuries, learning cheesemaking, baking, sausage production, pasta making, winemaking, olive oil production and much more.
We suggest small trattorie that do not often surface in guidebooks and where the only tourist often is likely you. Cooking is the kind you will never find outside of Italy. This is direct, free of artifice, and is a celebration of seasonal ingredients.
Finally, we encourage visits to regions that need your support, and that are far from the average tourist itinerary, and to destinations rebuilding after a natural disaster.
We are committed to minimizing the negative impacts of tourism and spreading our specific approach to sustainability. We in fact gave up our own car for environmental reasons nine years ago and conduct all of our research by train or on foot, occasionally renting an environmentally friendly car for short periods when a research destination is otherwise inaccessible.
If traveling sustainably is a priority for you too, please let us know. We will do all we can to help neutralize your impact, and—in some cases—contribute to the solution.
Jim Morrison