Albania adventure vacation

Planet

We want our vacations to be high impact in experience but low impact on the environment! Transport is mostly on foot except for transfers to points for excursions or restaurants if needed.

Your visit will help sustain sensitive tourism and protection for these areas. As such, our tour guides will encourage you to behave in an eco-friendly manner at all times by supporting the Leave No Trace principles –traveling where possible along marked water channels, disposing of waste properly, leaving what you find (unless it’s other people’s rubbish!), respecting wildlife and being considerate of other visitors and the local community.

We are committed to local conservation projects and have contributed actively as well as financially to local initiatives. As one of the leading sustainable tour operator in the Balkans, it is up to us to lead by example, protecting the National Parks from over-development and ensuring their beauty can be enjoyed by the next generation.

We are also working with German eco-tourism NGO GIZ and the World Bank funded 'Albania and Montenegro Lake Skadar Joint Eco-systems Project' to identify formal ways for our customers to volunteer and directly benefit the environment during their stay.

People

We have built strong links with local communities and support their maintenance of threatened traditions – from bee-keeping, fishing and carp-smoking to the making of wine, cheese, olive-oil and flavoured brandies. By visiting home-producers and buying their wares, you will build pride, contribute to the local economy and encourage the development of eco-tourism in an area where tourism needs examples of how to develop sustainably.

Berat and Thethi are UNESCO protected destinations – we only work with guides and family businesses that adhere to strict sustainable protocols.

English isn’t widely spoken, but your guides will be able to translate to make each interaction create a valuable cultural exchange between you and your host community. Your visit really counts in a remote, beautiful and unknown Balkan destination which is still suffering from decades of impoverishment after one of the longest and harshest communist regimes made Albania in effect a closed country for over 30 years.