Responsible Travel

At ICNOS Adventures, we take the idea of responsible tourism to heart. We live and work here. Our friends and family work and live here. We love Italy and its people. We have a deep vested interest in supporting and promoting tourism that is sustainable and non damaging to the local environment and culture.

So what is responsible tourism? This is the philosophy by which we design our tours and choose our operators and accommodations. Keep a higher percentage of the income from tourism in the local area.

In conventional package tourism up to 90% of the cost of your holiday leaves the destination. We choose local, usually family owned, hotels and restaurants. Our guides are hand picked and usually from the villages that you pass through. This starts and fosters a local industry of people who work and live in the areas and for the local area and people by creating jobs.

By using and supporting local businesses we Respect and Encourage the local cultures. Basically, when small groups of conscientios guests visit a locality to learn and enjoy the food and culture, jobs are created locally.

Visitors get the authentic exposure (not to mention food!) and people can earn a living in the towns and villages that they would otherwise have to leave to find gainful employment.

All of our vendors have been selected for their commitment to minimizing the impact on the environment.

In addition to using public transportation whenever possible, we choose albergos that recycle and restaurants that use local foods. Local businesses have always been thrifty, and have readily adapted to waste recycling and water conservation.

By using locally grown foods, restaurants reduce needless waste and support local farmers.
Sustainable Rural Development Project

We believe that our journeys should respect and benefit local people and the environment in the villages in which we operate. That is why we have chosen to support a sustainable development project in different villages of our region, supporting Clean up the World.
A global campaign that inspires and empowers communities to clean up, fix up and conserve their environment. Held in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme, it mobilises an estimated 35 million people across 130 countries each year.
By allocating a portion of the revenues from our trips directly to the support of a meaningful, sustainable development project in the country we visit, we aim to maximize respectful interaction with the local people and culture, minimizing our impact on the environment.

In line with our values, ICNOS has chosen to do our banking with the “Banca Etica”, the Italian ethical bank concerned with the social and environmental impacts of its investments and loans.

Ethical banks are part of a larger societal movement toward more social and environmental responsibility in the financial sector. This movement includes: ethical investment, socially responsible investment, corporate social responsibility, and is also related to such movements as the fair trade movement, ethical consumerism ect.
Ethical banks are regulated by the same authorities as traditional banks and have to abide by the same rules. While there are differences between ethical banks, they do share a common set of principles, the most prominent being transparency and social and/or environmental aim of the projects they finance.

ICNOS, in accordance with its core values, provides to the customers a diversified and integrated range of tourist services. Our journeys are developed respecting the principles of responsible and sustainable tourism, helping communities and local businesses.

All our local providers have been carefully chosen to offer a wide variety of services. We propose the best possible service in line with one’s allocated budget.

According to tour operators requirements and needs, our expertise includes travel management (accommodations, luggage transfers, local information) and organization of specialized activities (…such as walking/hiking, biking, kayaking, cooking classes, sailing, riding, wine tasting, yoga…).

As local agent, ICNOS delivers professional assistance, emergency support, local knowledge for organizing group and individual experiences, and takes care of every single participant…

Our mission is to arrange authentic Italian experiences, in the best way possible…