Responsible Tourism Policy | Grace Tours Sustainable Travel | Ecotourism

 

Grace Tours is a home bred local initiative in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, we offer personalized cultural tours in and around the resort town and surrounding rural communities. We focus on responsible travel for sustainable development of our fellow villagers. Our tours include village and township tours, home hosted stay ,lunches and dinners. We exist to bring prosperity to our community in a sustainable and responsible way by bringing small groups to come to our village ,stay, eat play and interact with local villagers and residents in a genuine, mutual and respective way.

 

Economic responsibility

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Our tourism model puts our people, culture and heritage at the core of our operations before the profits and all other financial gains. For every tour successfully conducted we expect some benefits to trickle down to the common villager and man on the streets.

Locals are engaged in a lot of craft and art, we provide a platform for visitors to appreciate the talent and hard work that the villagers exhibit in a controlled ,not too commercialized way.  

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Travelers pay a fair price for the high quality and unique products and services they receive from the many community-based organizations we work with. And we ensure that as much money as possible remains in the local economy by using local suppliers, local food, and family owned accommodation or home stays.

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As you use our local Guides for your tours, one is rest assured that the money you pay will remain with the local communities, such kind of money will find its way to various families ,paying school fees and buying medicine for someone in the community as it speculates.

Our platform is designed to help responsible and discerning travelers to find authentic, experience-rich holidays and adventures. Through our community-based ecotourism initiatives, travelers come into direct contact with local people, in a low-volume way, based on mutual respect. They eat traditional, natural food and take part in cultural and ecotourism activities. All the activities are Eco-friendly and organized by the local communities, all guides are local and most of the products and services are organic and locally sourced.

We pride ourselves as fair tourism believers compared to mass tourism.

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Environmental responsibility

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Communities that we work with uphold high levels of environmental awareness and preservation, because we are not a mass tourism driver, our tours have very little negative environmental impact. You will observe as you stay and interact with villagers that they place so much value and importance to fair treatment of animals, environmentally friendly organic farming methods.

We are working with other community advocates to eradicate open defecation by partnering with villagers in building Blair toilets.

 

Social responsibility

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We contribute financially to the development of the communities we operate in by setting aside 10% of our profits towards any community needs like repairing of boreholes, buying livestock treatment chemicals and other socio-economic challenges faced by villagers.

Tours are not centralized in one homestead only but we have a number of homesteads we use in order to spread the gains of this initiative to all villagers.

By employing local youths as Tour guides we both empower them financially and also offer them some training and skills for future employment opportunities.

Travelers buy high quality and unique products and services from local communities and tour operators. Improvements to local people’s living standards, income redistribution, job creation and environmental preservation are immediate and visible.

Compiled by:T.Moyo ©2019

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