Responsible’ tourism is playing an increasingly important role in Laos and rightly so. 

Viengchampa are committed to ecotourism and responsible tourism in Laos and actively seek to research and promote projects that will benefit the local community and environment, as well as being a thoroughly enjoyable experience for the client.

Our aim is to encourage potential clients to book direct with a local operator to ensure that all the profits go back to the developing country of Laos.  This will benefit our own staff and families, but also our company policy is to channel some of our profits back into the needy local community.

We also aim to encourage tourism throughout Laos, particularly in poor rural areas, and ensure that it is the local villagers that benefit every time. 

We have a strong desire to protect the local environment and therefore encourage tours around respected eco lodges with strong environmental policies as much as possible, and also educate our guides and staff on the importance of being environmentally friendly, both in the office and for the guides, on the ground. 

Economic Responsibility

First and foremost we are a local Laos operator, 99% of the staff we employ are Laos nationals.  Potential clients booking through our company can be rest assured that the profits are going directly to the country they are visiting and helping the people in that country. 

The hotels we feature in our tours at the very least are non chain hotels, and many are recognized eco lodges, or accommodations that channel their profits back into the local community or local environment.  One key specific example of a locally owned hotel is ‘The Boatlanding Eco Lodge’  This property is locally owned, the restaurant specifically serves local food only, all purchased from the local market.  The Boatlanding also has a strict policy of employing local people, often with no hospitality experience, but trained on site.  Similarly, when the eco lodge was constructed, it was built using local building ,methods and employing only local people to build it.

Our tours encourage our clients to eat at local restaurants and experience local Lao food.  One excellent example of this is a half day cooking class at Tum Tum Cheng Restaurant in Luang Prabang.  Here clients clients experience first hand the economic benefits eating here brings, as they will accompany the head chef to the local market to purchase their food, before being taught how to prepare and cook it.

Wherever possible we encourage tours where the fees contribute to conservation.  One great example of this is our city tours to the ‘Traditional Arts and Ethnology Centre’ which promotes the diverse culture of Laos’ ethnic minorities.  Entrance fees contribute to research into Handicraft development, which in turn provides a regular income for ethnic minority people http://www.taeclaos.org/exhibitions.html

We also encourage clients to spend locally, as well as only using local restaurants on tour, we also include a visit to Luang Prabang Night Market, which has a wide range of good s handmade by various local people and ethnic minorities.  Purchasing at the market enables the money to go direct to the producer.

Tours will encourage the use of local transport, examples include hiring boats direct from a local boatman for our tours to Pak Ou Caves in Luang Prabang,

When we operate tours in rural areas we always seek to employ a local village guide, ensuring that the local area benefits from our tours too.  On local treks food supplied will be sourced locally.  Evidence of the tours we can organize rurally can be found on www.ecotourismlaos.com a government/NGO initiative designed to support eco tourism and pro poor tourism in Laos.

Environmental Responsibility

Within the office, our staff work on paperless desks, data is stored via a main server and tour files are all stored electronically, which is an extremely innovative notion within a developing country where computers are still a relatively new concept in the work place.

The tours we operate in rural areas involve the ‘Ecotourism Laos’ initiative, as mentioned before where careful consideration is given towards the environment itself and minimizing any damage.  Each one of our tours will support one such activity.

On tours, we promote and use Eco Lodges with strong environmental policies. A specific example of an Eco Lodge that we use is the Kingfisher Eco Lodge in southern Laos.  This eco lodge was carefully designed to use local building materials and employed local people to construct it.  The Eco lodge also boasts hot water supplied by solar power.  All electricity is either created by solar power or hydroelectric power. Water conservation practises are followed, and eco systems are protected, including no planting of any non native plants in the lodge area.  A more detailed policy can be found on http://www.kingfisherecolodge.com/policy.htm

We also have strong environmental practises when on tour.  For example we feature a tour within the ‘Nam Ha National Park’ using local guides trained in ecotourism, and they will advise clients beforehand on how to trek from an eco friendly perspective – this includes sticking to trails, and providing water in reusable water carriers on tour.  The tours also have a maximum of 8 persons, to ensure any disturbance to the local wildlife and eco system is kept to a minimum.

Social Responsibility

We can provide you with a country info pack prior to travel explaining the various do’s and don’ts in order to be a responsible tourist from a social point of view and minimizing negative impacts on the local community.  Being a local tour operator we are more acutely aware of the right way to act.

It already is company policy that all rural treks use a local village guide in addition to our general Laos guide.  No foreign guides are employed on any tour.

Even in the city, tours will include visits to a restaurant set up to train former street children.  Our company is one of the original and biggest supporters of this restaurant (Mak Phet, Vientiane)

Our company sponsors a school within a poor rural village, and make contributions to improve that school from our tours.  This is been set up with full approval from the head village and villagers.  We plan to extend this initiative to other villagers in the area, such is its success.  We also support the publication of books for children in Laos through the excellent Big Brother Mouse.