Mutual respect leads to great experience

 

Because of our commitment to Sustainable & Responsible tourism in Croatia, we lay significant emphasis on the topic. Bringing a different way of tourism to less developed areas of Croatia ensuring that it contributes to the local communities. We strive to have as little impact as possible. We believe in choosing modes of traveling that preserve nature and cultures of the places we experience.
Raftrek Adventure Travel is a small family-owned business and we create, market, and sell tours that focus primarily on an outdoor adventure. Apart from being passionate about the outdoors, we are passionate about our clients getting to know our people, culture, food, and way of life. Our team is formed by outdoor enthusiasts who all share a passion for travel, respect for the environment, and different cultures. Over the years we have formed long and trusting partnerships within the communities we work in, engaging individuals and businesses in our tours. This approach is largely responsible for our success and who we are today.

 

National Park Durmitor

 

Sustainable & Responsible tourism in Croatia

Here at Raftrek Travel, we’re passionate about the places we visit. We are committed to designing and operating our holidays in such a way to ensure the maximization of positive effects. Such as bringing tourism to local economies, and cultures. Whilst minimizing any negative impacts on the environment. There are many ways we work to achieve this. By participating in any of our trips, you will bring work and income to the people who are still recovering from the war. Since these are the areas severely affected by war.

Our guides are trained to minimize the impact on the environment. While supporting your experience as guests. Trip leaders practice “Leave No Trace” principles on trails. Recycle whenever possible in all the regions we travel to. Where possible we donate leftover foods to various community programs. All of our trips ensure that local people benefit as much as possible. In the form of farm products trade, new jobs, and services provided.

 

Durmitor hiking

 

We consider it our responsibility to devote efforts to maintain and preserve the integrity of this fledgling sector. Hereby petitioning the introduction of tighter controls over the use of the country’s natural resources. Raftrek offers new perspectives to travelers by providing more authentic holidays. Which allows the true experience of each destination.  While contributing to the well-being and preservation of those areas.

Economic responsibility

We are committed to designing and operating our holidays in a way that maximizes the positive effects of Responsible tourism in Croatia while minimizing any negative impacts this may have on the environment.

The nature of what we do often leads us to operate in rural areas often lacking the infrastructure necessary for economic growth. While that is often good for nature preservation, it leaves some communities isolated from any form of economic growth. We bring tourism into those communities by employing local people. Apart from the economic benefit, this brings to the local communities, it also drives those communities to care about the environment because a clean natural environment is effectively what we are selling to tourists. The demands of our clients also bring awareness of global trends into those communities eg. the demand for locally grown organic food.

In Kaštel Žegarski – a war-torn town which has seen minimal progress in the last 30 years, we have managed to set up our base on a family farm. The family sells their farm-grown packed lunches to our guests. They participate in the logistics of our Zrmanja river tour (our best selling tour). In the same town, we also recruit and employ local young people as river guides. This is also good for our business as local people have a lot more to teach tourists about the local culture, flora, and fauna.

Environmental responsibility

We are passionate about keeping our environment clean and protecting wildlife not only because of the intrinsic value of nature but because we are aware that our business and our livelihoods depend on 100% on nature preservation. We practice and teach others to practice a “leave no trace” policy and “take nothing but memories” policy to ensure we alter our environment as little as possible. When we sell a river tour, a boat tour, or a hiking tour we are selling the river, sea, and mountain as they should be in their best state – their original state. In all our bases and on our catamaran we recycle and encourage all our clients to do so as well.

At the beginning of each season, we organize team-building style clean-up actions where guides and base managers clean up the area in which they are about to work in the coming season. This means the river base managers and guides clean the river, the skippers and catamaran guides clean the beaches and the trekking/hiking guides clean the trails we regularly use. While guiding our tours, we also pick up any trash we see along the way. Often times our clients will join in on this making an activity out of it and leaving them with a feeling they have left a good mark on their holiday destination. Apart from the actual cleaning, all entrance fees we pay for taking our clients to national parks also go towards cleaning up and nature and wildlife preservation.

Social responsibility

We have recognized a long time ago that our adventure-seeking clients are more than just adrenaline seekers. They are passionate explorers of history, art, architecture, food, culture, way of life, and mentality. That is why each of our itineraries includes a cultural aspect to it. Whether it is a visit to a monastery during a cycling tour or a dinner visit to a local family at the end of a hike. We aim to satisfy our clients’ curiosity about all things Croatia. By employing mostly local people we ensure that they are the ones teaching others first-hand about local culture. Locals are also the first ones to know about local projects and events. Therefore they are always eager to include guests to participate.

We are including a link to our blog post of one of our projects. Therefore a BIG thanks to everyone that have participated! “Let’s KEEP our drinks clean, as long as we can!” Think Responsible tourism in Croatia!