Policy Aims

At Vamos Travel we pride ourselves on offering unrivalled service, ensuring our clients experience every destination up close and personal. Our family run business is passionately behind Responsible Tourism, and is always striving to offer more ‘green’ alternative holiday programs – that really consider the impact of our tourism on local communities. We always aim for the most eco-friendly solution, eco-education and green passion where possible. We are guests of mother earth, and we should treat her home with respect.

For an example of our commitment to finding green holidays: Currently we are representing the ‘World’s greenest spa resort’ – Aqua City, based in Poprad – as one of their main UK sales representatives. We are very proud of this.

Economic Responsibility

Since the birth of Vamos Travel (a family business), we have always understood the two major positive aspects of out going tourism. Firstly, our clients get to experience something culturally new and exciting. We get to share our travel passions with other like minded people, which is extremely satisfying. Secondly, and equally as important (but often forgotten)  - our incoming guests we send are helping to benefit the local economy. Vamos Travel works with local agencies – that all source services from local providers – whether this is for private transportation, accommodation or excursions. Over the years Vamos Travel has been operating, we have seen economies boom, especially in our markets in Eastern Europe. It’s a gratifying feeling knowing we have contributed positively to employment & income levels across less wealthy cities, towns & villages in Europe. 

We are the only sports agency in the area of Tolmin which organises and provides active holidays. Our work is a big contribution to economic state of Tolmin, as we offer cooperation and income to everybody, working in tourism in close or distant surroundings (hotel, rooms, apartments, pension, camps, restaurants, bars, shops….).

There are 30 persons employed in our agency (guides, drivers, office girls), 90% from local surroundings (four of them are full employed, other are students and they work through Student agency). On this way we help minimizing brain- drain from small towns to the capital. We are giving an opportunity to the youth for study and later work in tourism.

We always recommend to our guests to stay at local suppliers (private rooms, apartments, pensions…) and eat food in local restaurants. In this way they try traditional food from this region and help to increase their profit.

All our programmes involve variety of different local suppliers as transport companies, historical museums, natural and cultural heritage, local guiding, other companies which provide different sports in the area, eco products from local farmers, insurance companies…

We also own a local shop – souvenir shop, where we sell local products made of glass, stone and wood, different types of brandy, honey…

Our company arranges extreme sport programmes, where special equipment is needed. Some of this equipment is made in Slovenia (rafts, mini rafts, life jackets, wind breakers...); other is imported from abroad (helmets, paddles, kayaks, ropes...). All other things, which are possible to find in Slovenia, we buy here.
 

Environmental Responsibility

The key is to be aware of all impacts of incoming tourism – positive & negative. We demand from the whole team at Vamos Travel – to find the most positive & green solution. 

Vamos Travel does not believe in printed brochures. In the digital age, we provide clients with word documents & PDFs directly to their e-mail if required. All our set packages are directly seen on our website. We feel this conscious decision is main step forward to reducing ‘paper waste’. 

We actively promote historical, UNESCO areas & regions of natural beauty – which helps to support these important places, and sustaining them in the appropriate way for our childrens’ children to enjoy (in the same way). 

We try and help to rebuild tourism in areas of troubled times. For example, we organise ‘Chernobyl Tours in Ukraine & Belarus.  

Our guides educated our guests, whilst showing them a fun & hospitable time. We truly believe education is the true steps forward to helping people grow their green conscience.

In our own offices we use recycled and recyclable materials whenever possible. We use an electronic booking system and we make a conscious decision to minimize the use of our printing facilities. We re-cycle our office paper, and also; tins, bottles, jars & plastics in the kitchen.

Care of the environment is one of our main concerns, as we want our descendants to enjoy unspoiled nature as we do today.

Every year we organize last weekend in March on Saturday free cleaning action ?CLEAN SOCA RIVER AND ITS BANKS?. We gather around 100 volunteers in cooperation with tourist, youth and fishing society, scouts and locals. We advertise our action on local radio station Alpski val, in newspapers Primorske novice and Epicenter and with posters around Tolmin buildings. On the day of cleaning action we meet all together in front of our office, where volunteers get information and equipment for cleaning. Usually we make 5 different groups to clean different areas in Tolmin (river banks of Soca and Tolminka River, paths, town centre, places around tourist spots). Those who clean rivers are moving down the river in rafts, others are walking. We leave bags and trashes on a defined spots – next day Environmental Company collects and drives away. We finish at the late afternoon.

We do our best to make our guests respect and enjoy in clean and unspoiled nature. Individual guests are warned about environmental responsibility when they sign Declaration of awareness, liability and joint liability. One of statement is: PLEASE RESPECT NATURE AND DO NOT POLLUTE IT! LET YOUR CHILDREN ENJOY IT TOO. We educate groups who stay in Tolmin one week at welcome briefings and during their stay here. We explain them how to use recycle bins, where to put trashes, to not pollute rivers and waters, because they are drinkable, not to pick flowers and not to scare wild animals. We suggest them to use one towel in hotel more days together, not just once; take care to switch off lights and to economize with water while taking shower, cleaning teeth, washing…

Our staff has every year several trainings and seminar, like Protection at work, First Aid, Rescuing from wild water, Survival weekend in mountains.

We fight against excessive extraction of river gravel. In 2005 we organised press conference “Excessive extraction of gravel from Soca River”. We invited specialists from environmental responsibility field, biologists, Fish society, community and present main problems. At the same time we protest against this with distribute among locals T-Shirts with a caricature (angry digger in the river and scared fish jumping out of the water) and slogan “Save the Soca River”. From than nothing really happen, but we are still fighting – we push municipality to change legislation about excessive extraction.

We fight against development of mass tourism in our town and we wish to increase the quality of our offer. We do not support building plenty of hotels, but small hotels, family pensions and apartments. We have limited number of people on activities and per day.

We minimize the impact of our tours as following: we hike only on marked paths, we do not disturb wild animals and pick mountain flowers, we transport our guests as less as possible to huts and pastures, guides have always trash bags with them.
In our office we try to print as less as possible or we reuse paper for printing and we recycle trash paper. We return empty inks and batteries back to the companies. We have saving electric lamps, automatic switch off computer screen saver after ½ hour non working on it. We transmit data as much as possible on USB key and not on CD or DVD.
 

Social Responsibility

We love our destinations and the people that live there, so it is important to Vamos Travel that they also enjoy the social & cultural exchanges with our clients. It’s important for this positive cycle to go round and round. More than not, our clients are very similar to the people that work at Vamos Travel. They are keen to immerse themselves in local language, traditions and activities. 

Whenever asked & whenever possible, we like to help in local charities and support good causes. Since Vamos Travel began – we have dedicated a web page to Chernobyl charities.  

In our company we organize open door days and invite children from kinder gardens to get acquainted with our work, equipment and attitude towards nature. We arrange and provide special programmes for schools how to survive in nature – how to make meals, make a fire, a campsite, search for food, to orienteer…

We treat guests as our friends and not as numbers, leaving us money for supplied service.

We offer work and employment to the local people and help minimizing brain-drain from small towns to the capital.
For guests and local people we organize various fun events, where guests have a chance to meet locals and our way of living. Every week we prepare cheese and cottage tasting from our pastures around Tolmin, where produce origin cheese Tolminec and Slovenian wine tasting at top-level restaurant in the area. We invite guest to visit eco market on Saturday with local products.

We organize cultural evenings where we present culinary delights of Slovenia, folklore and other cultural heritage.