Responsible Tourism

Baltic Bike Travel achieves Travelife Partner level award on April 20th, 2023. The award recognizes the long-term efforts of Baltic Bike Travel regarding sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility. More info re Travelife is here...

As tourism becomes a truly global industry, we recognise our obligation to operate our tours in a responsible and sustainable fashion. We view this not only as an environmental issue but an economic and social one as well. At Baltic Bike Travel we are aware that the travel industry challenges the local environment and the entire ecosystem of the planet. Our ambition is to minimize this impact in our business.

The following are the key points in our philosophy:

• Small groups travelling by the most ecological transport, bicycles, have less impact on local communities and environments;
• Where possible we believe in putting money directly into the communities we visit by using locally owned and run accommodation and eating locally produced food;
• We are careful to ensure that local staff receive a fair rate for their services;
• We encourage our own staff to take an active interest in responsible and sustainable tourism and train them accordingly so that they can put our policies into practice, etc.

BENEFITING THE LOCAL COMMUNITY:

• we employ local tour guides who live and know her/his own country and neighbouring countries;
• on long distance trips we hiring local guides in big cities who support our tour leaders with their local knowledge,
• on guided tours we always include visits to museums and galleries of local handicrafts with preference to small family owned places, for example, amber gallery in Nida, Lithuania, or bicycle museum in Saulkrasti, Latvia, or Angla windmill park in Saaremaa Island, Estonia;
• we prefer accommodating our guests at local hotels rather than in international chain hotels;
• we offer locally produced food, for example, where it is possible our staff or tour leaders organise picnic meals served by local people in their homesteads, and in general support the travellers' interest in the local cultures;
• we support local communities in our region by donating used bicycles to child care homes, St Franciscan Oncology Center, etc.

ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY

We aim to minimise water and atmospheric pollution from any specific tourism development we use.

Offsetting carbon emissions: most of our groups travel by bus or minibus, while rental bikes are transported in trailer (not by separated motorised vehicle). To decrease the air pollution, we choose to work with transport companies offering newer, energy-efficient vehicles.

Our staff members are encouraged to use public transport or bikes instead of private cars journeys for commuting and business travels. We even provide company bikes and e-bikes for this purpose, and promote this financially by supplying our employees with monthly public transport tickets or supplement to their salaries for commuting by bikes.

Reducing waste: We aim to achieve zero litter policies everywhere. Therefore we encourage travellers to avoid disposable plastic and to recycle. From 2018 on all guided cycle tours we provide our customers with reusable plastic bottles for drinking water which we supply free of charge from big bottles re-filled by a local company. We recommend going off the beaten track, getting extraordinary travel experiences in the pristine nature and leaving it untouched afterwards.

Recycling and energy saving in the office: We run our head office in a responsible manner by using fair-trade products, monitoring, and where possible reducing, our energy usage, as well as recycling. We are strict about recycling in our office and garages. We have installed special garbage bins to sort out plastic, paper, glass/plastic bottles (deposit), metal and rubber tires. We challenge our staff old habits and encourage them to recycle printer cartridges and reduce printing (and reusing one-side used paper) and minimize all forms of waste. For example, our staff members are encouraged to drink locally collected herb teas and coffee from reusable cups instead of using plastic cups, and use water from big bottles refilled by a local company instead of buying small plastic bottles.

SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

We attempt to operate our holidays in a way that encourages positive cultural exchanges. In our pre-departure information we always provide a recommended reading list about the countries our clients are planning to travel - it is always usefull to find out more about the cultures and people before you meet them :)

We encourage our clients, through our literature, staff and leaders, to act in a socially responsible way.

We promote environmental and social friendly bicycle transport and tourism culture in Lithuania and the Baltics:

• by supporting local cyclists group / non-governmental organisation, SPIKIS.LT, which makes cycle expeditions to other countries and produce high quality movies about their culture and nature (these movies are presented in cinemas of biggest Lithuanian towns);
• by supporting and participating in cycle tourism development projects, for example,
  Lithuanian Seaside Cycle Route which is still the only signposted cycle route in Lithuania (opened in 2006);
  European Cycle Routes - EuroVelo in Lithuania - EuroVelo 10 (Baltic Sea Circuit) and EuroVelo 13 (Iron Curtain Trail) - both of them overlapping with the Seaside Cycle Route and go along the Baltic Coast, while the EuroVelo 11 (Eastern European Route) is planned to go via Vilnius but this route is under development in most places.