Sustainable tourism

Le Voyageur engages to support responsible and sustainable tourism.

We aim to provide stable jobs and a stable income to our staff in our office, but also to the many freelance drivers and guides who are working for us. We also work mainly with small and locally owned hotels, which are doing their best to reduce waste, save energy and water and also use local ingredients in the food.

When we create tours for our clients, we try to use as few domestic flights as possible or no domestic flights at all.

Tourism is an important job provider in a country like Madagascar, where there is very little industry and not enough other jobs. And all the park guides in the parks and reserves actively help to preserve the nature and the environement, and their income allows them to have enough resources to provide food, accomodation, clothes etc, but also education for their children. Their presence in the parks and reserves helps to curb illegal logging and poaching.

In Madagascar, it is irreallistic for the time beeing to use electric cars, since there are no electric charging stations in the country and electricity production is insufficient. But we monitor the situation closely.

We encourage our clients to refill empty water bottles bought locally with tap water from the hotel and donate them to local people in regions where water is scarce, they can use it for cooking. In Madagascar, you can buy large water bottles, to refill the water bottle you brought along, only in a very few big shops in the country. So in our opinion, it’s not a good idea to drive quite some kilometers to buy those 5 Liter bottles, compared to if you’d buy a 1,5 L bottle right next door in one of the thousands of small shops all over the country, where you also provide an income to someone. And then : water is an excellent growing environment for bacteria and refillable bottles should be washed with detergent and bottle brush at least every two days in hot environments. This washing is hard to organize and will waste more water than it saves.

 

We also have a reforestation project in Andasibe, where we already have planted many hundred trees, and we are supporters of the NGO ADES is helping since 2001 with their solar stoves and energy efficient cookstoves to reduce the deforestation. Our clients are also welcome to visit one of the workshops of ADES during their tour, and can upon prior reservation also eat a meal, cooked on solar stoves. ADES also runs eduction projects where they make children and adults aware of the impact that the energy efficient stoves have, and how important it is to reduce deforestation. In addition, ADES also runs their own reforestation project. We donate for each client traveling with us for at least one week an amount of 3 € to ADES.

We are also a member of The Code since 2016. The Code is an international NGO who’s fighting against the sexual exploitation of children in travel and tourism. They raise awareness of the problem and train the different actors in tourism to actively engage in the fight against the exploitation of children.