Gecko Travel Statement of Endeavour for Responsible Travel.Mission Statement Introduction to Gecko Travel brochure and our web site, 2003. "Gecko Travel is an independent, fully licensed, UK based tour operator. Our aim is to offer guided, small group adventure tours for those who wish to discover the real South East Asia, away from the traditional 'package group' trails and high-rise, overdeveloped resorts. On our tours we will stay in small, family-run hotels and guesthouses, eat in local restaurants and use local transport as much as possible. In addition all local guides and agencies used are considered friends rather than 'business contacts'. The idea being that you will visit as guests rather than as tourists. Our extensive knowledge of South East Asia enables us to offer original tour itineraries providing a balance between the region's well-known 'must-sees' and off-the-beaten-track, 'best kept secrets'. Gecko Travel tours will provide a real insight into the countries you are visiting - culture, history, landscape and natural world - and provide the opportunity for genuine interaction with the local people. Respect for local people, their cultures, traditions, religions and environment are essential to our philosophy and our tours and we work hard to ensure our groups have a positive impact on the places and people visited. We hope that you will be treated as guests and behave as guests whilst travelling with Gecko Travel." General comment. Please note that all group sizes for our scheduled tours are between 2 and a maximum of 8 persons. Groups are accompanied at all times by a tour-leader and where appropriate one or more local guides. All transportation is organized by local operators and using local drivers. We feel that our 'discreet' group sizes lead to less impact both on the environment and the people that we visit as well as allowing for more supervision, advice and explanations with the high ratio of guides/tour-leader to clients. Contribution to Local Economies Employment. As of October 2002 Gecko Travel is also licensed as a tour operator in Thailand, for South East Asia. As such strict adherence to local laws are applied including labour regulations necessitating a 3:1 ratio of local to foreign employees. Furthermore, local agents carry many of Gecko Travel's administrative and logistical tasks out exclusively in Thailand. All tour leaders are either native to the area or have lived and travelled in South East Asia for long periods. Over 75% of our overseas tour-leaders are actually resident in Thailand thus contributing full-time to the local economies. 100% of guides used in the countries we visit are local guides with proper national accreditation where demanded by law, for all of our guiding activities. As well as contributing to the local economy, this practice ensures that our passengers learn about the region that they are visiting first hand from someone who knows the area(s) intimately and provides local employment. In many cases this employment is an alternative to practices either no longer carried out or carried out illegally such as hunting, logging or guerilla/military activities. Several of our guides are from local ethnic minorities such as Karen guides in Kanchanburi, Hmong guides in parts of Laos and Northern Thailand and Orang Asli guides in Malaysia. Furthermore, many of our activities take place in more remote, 'untouristy' areas with traditionally high poverty and unemployment levels where the introduction of tourism, even (or especially) on a low scale has a definite beneficial knock-on effect with those persons not directly concerned with the activities. That is to say that many people in local communities recognize the possible beneficial effects of such tourism, namely economic, and have an increased concern for the environment. Example 1. Khao Lak village in Southern Thailand. A relatively poor farming community was inspired, partly through our interest, to organize a co-operative home-stay and trekking scheme and has since received grants, training and advice to that extent from the Tourism Authority of Thailand. We are also pleased to state that several local village lads are now keener to lead bird watching and nature tours than their traditional pastimes of shooting or trapping. Gecko Travel provided the co-operative scheme with textbooks on local bird and animal life. Example 2. We have instigated visits to a Lanten tribal village in N.W. Laos with the assistance of the local schoolteacher who has since set up a small village co-operative stall where local handicrafts can be sold as souvenirs. This has led to an increase of interest amongst the villagers in traditional handicrafts as well as the locally produced mulberry paper the production of which had almost disappeared. These and many other schemes have a 'knock-on' effect amongst the entire community rather than just the 1 or 2 persons employed as guides. Finally all our regular guides are provided with any relevant equipment/clothing for guiding purposes they should require. Accommodation: our emphasis is on small family run guesthouses that employ local workers, or in the case of larger hotels, non-chain locally owned establishments. Inclusion of such places in Gecko Travel tours provides regular contribution to their income across both high and low seasons. We include home-stays in some of our itineraries. These provide income directly to the owners of the houses in which we stay as well as indirectly for other members of the village. Passengers are encouraged to make purchases, such as from the village shops and from individual crafts-people (embroidery from Hmong women in Northern Thailand for example). Food: an integral part of real understanding and enjoyment of a region or country is eating the local food. The majority of our tours are inclusive of 3 meals per day - the idea being that our guides and tour-leaders aim to provide a guided tour to the regional cuisines as well as the sites and landscapes. We ensure that as well as locally run larger restaurants; our passengers are given the opportunity to enjoy the cuisine sold by small vendors from street side stalls. This ensures that as wide a range people in the local food industry as possible benefit from our custom and in certain areas helps to counter the opinion that Western tourists all want to eat pizzas and club sandwiches. We are enthusiastic supporters of the recent trend in such countries such as Laos and Cambodia to create authentic local dishes for foreign tourist and to reverse to even a slight extent the trend towards Western fast food style places in areas frequented by tourists. We believe our ideas have been effective in counteracting the often-held belief that Asian street food is somehow unpalatable or unhygienic. Restaurants making a selling point by serving what is locally termed 'jungle food' are strictly avoided since this often means wild and illegally caught animals. This practice is particularly prevalent in Laos and Vietnam. Transport: transport used is local bus, train or national air carriers. When it is more practical to charter vehicles we employ minibus and boat drivers from either the origin or destination of a transfer, working directly with the driver or through a local travel agent. Our small group size allows us to use small vehicles like pick-up trucks when visiting rural areas and National Parks, where use of larger vehicles in such areas often results in widening and rendering of existing paths to facilitate coach access. The consequent effect on flora and fauna can be devastating. Financial Aid: Gecko Travel has provided financial assistance to a number of local operators; including interest free loans to rebuild a set of bungalows destroyed during monsoon rains on Koh Muk and to a minibus driver in Trang to register his business to comply with national requirements regarding the transportation of non-nationals. We continue to provide moral and financial assistance to our regular sub-contractors where appropriate and helpful to them. Some examples of direct financial assistance from Gecko Travel Financial assistance are as follows: Projected schemes include contributions to an AIDS orphans school in Chiang Mai Examples of independent projects funded by our clients and assisted by Gecko Travel are: Printed matter: The production of most of our company literature, business cards, ticket envelopes etc. is produced in Thailand using local businesses. Environmental Awareness Our initial problems and concerns in this respect were far more to do with the local employees than the Western tourists. The majority of the latter are fortunately aware of most of the issues, whilst a poorly educated fisherman or hilltribe guide is not. Whilst environmental awareness is certainly growing in all S.E. Asian countries it is unfortunately still some way behind most 'Western' countries. Furthermore whilst it is relatively easy to prevent a driver or boatman from throwing his drink can out of the window or into the sea by threatening not to use his services again, it is more difficult to explain why he shouldn't want to throw it out of the window. (See below) Brochures: full and comprehensive details of our products are available in electronic form on our website. A PDF version of our printed brochure has been available for online viewing, which reduces considerably our paper consumption in terms of print runs and mailing envelopes. Office sundries: Gecko Travel's UK office uses recycled and recyclable materials wherever possible. Biodegradable waste is composted in the company garden. Packed lunches: Many of our activities require that we take food with us. We discourage the use of Styrofoam boxes to carry food and prefer that it be packaged in biodegradable materials such as banana leaf or cassava or else reusable plastic containers (e.g. Tupperware). We are pleased to point out that the Thai government has recently issued a law banning polystyrene/Styrofoam food containers from being taken into any national park. Biodegradable cassava leaf containers are now widely available. We have endeavored educate local guides as to the folly of casually throwing water bottles etc. into the bushes. We are now proud of each of our regular guides' awareness in this respect and pleased to see them now explaining the reasoning behind this to other local people. Drinking water: refillable plastic water bottles are used whilst on treks and either refilled from jerry cans kept in the transport vehicle, boiled water or stream water provided local guides can testify to its potability. Water: In areas where water is a scarce commodity such as on some of the islands, both the resort management and tour leaders ensure that passengers are aware of the need to be frugal with their use of it. In such places as freshwater supplies are problematic written notices to that effect are generally placed in each room of the resort. During overnight treks and camping, washing is generally done in streams and the use of 'eco-friendly' soaps and washing powders in such circumstances is noted to clients before they begin their trip. Likewise, we make similar requests of our local staff. However, such items are difficult to come-by in South East Asia and if available are often beyond the fiscal means of the local people. Damage to the Environment: During trekking and snorkelling trips passengers are informed of the fragility of the ecosystem and required not to touch any thing at all - coral, shellfish or indeed any kind of flora and fauna unless under close supervision from a guide. Boatmen are strictly prohibited from anchoring on coral - a formerly common practice that is now thankfully rare. When trekking passengers are told to bring plastic zip-lock bags in which to keep used toilet paper. They are advised to keep cigarette butts in their pockets or other container until an appropriate disposal facility is available. All regular transportation used is regularly tested including checking exhaust pollution levels. Social Awareness Political Situation: Passengers are advised to visit the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's 'Know Before you Go' website (to which a link is provided from our site) to learn about political and other related concerns in the country they are to visit. A good understanding of the political system and recent history of any country visited is an essential requirement for all our tour-leaders. We are at present refraining from conducting tours in Burma since we consider that the country under it's current political regime is not suitable for organized tourism and Gecko Travel would not wish to be seen in any way to either legitimize the regime or to contribute financially towards the government. Cultural Sensitivity: Each passenger is provided with a document detailing appropriate dress while in Southeast Asia. An orientation meeting is organized by a tour-leader prior to the start of any trip where aspects of culture and our required respect towards it are explained and discussed. For example: dress, general behavior, local ways of eating and so on. It is a practice on all tours to attempt to teach the fundamentals of the local language so that our clients can at least say thank-you, hello and please. Many actually manage to learn substantially more, which is obviously much appreciated by local people. Indeed it gives us great pleasure that many resort staff, local operators, guides etc have remarked on our groups' levels of politeness and respect - two highly valued qualities in South East Asia. When visiting more remote areas, and for example hill-tribe villages, advice is given to clients on the suitability of gifts that they wish to take to the villages. Cash gifts directly to individuals are particularly avoided and any such donations directed towards the school or village headman for appropriate use. Cultural Norms and No-Nos: passengers are informed by their tour leader of social conventions to which they should be sensitive, for example touching people on the head and pointing feet at people, public signs of affection etc. Supporting the community: In addition to our regular trips, in consort with The Pattaya Orphanage Trust and Charity Challenge, we run an annual fundraising trek for the Pattaya Orphanage. This raises large amounts of much needed money for this community of over 250 children and disabled young adults in Pattaya. Various schemes are also supported by regular visits of their sites and if present souvenir shops, such as the handicraft school for handicapped persons in Siem Reap, Cambodia, visits and donations to the 'land-mine museum' in Siem Reap (supporting the organizer's mine clearance operations), the handicapped persons silk painting workshop near Hanoi, Vietnam, community weaving projects in Trang Province, Thailand whilst tours of Penang, Malaysia for instance are undertaken in collaboration with the Penang Heritage Trust who provide financial assistance for the preservation of historic buildings in Penang. Furthermore clients are encouraged to shop in local markets rather than the 'souvenir' shops often belonging to large hotels etc and many guide market tours are included in our tours. For examples of assistance ands support schemes see contribution to the local economies - financial assistance. Conclusion With adherence to the policy detailed herein, Gecko Travel provides culturally and environmentally aware, responsible tourism in Southeast Asia. It is tourism that contributes economically, socially and environmentally in the fullest of ways to the countries and localities that we visit. We help local people get the best deal from our operation in their regions and provide enjoyable, memorable and constructive experiences for our clients. We are also pleased to be able to say that our visits are generally enjoyable and constructive for the local people visited as well. Gecko Travel 2003 |